Break Down
by MorriganFearn
Summary: The rise and fall of a shinobi of the Sand. One of the darker chapters in Suna's history. Fourth Kazekage-centric drabbles.
1. Crane

Author's Note: I'm back from ficwad for a short space of time. I'm comming to the conclusion that my computer just hates fanfic sites in general. Anyway, this is a little out of my ordinary realm of writing, what with it being in present tense, and basically an experiment. It has been complete for over a year now, and I'd like to share.

Disclaimer: I do not own [/Naruto/], and these characters are not mine.

... Break Down ...  
... by IWCT ...  
... Part One: Crane ...

They're calling this the Great Ninja War already, and it's only the tenth year since Sand has been involved. He has been a jounin for a year and a half, and his fourteenth birthday is nothing more to him than a marker to tell him that he has another five months before it's been two years. Already the villagers are calling him the most ruthless man in Sunagakure.

He shrugs the title off, as he teaches the chuunin he's been paired with how to tear a man apart from the inside, using the air in his blood stream. It's taken five years for him to develop this signature technique of his, but the war's on, and he could die tomorrow. He isn't so irresponsible to leave his village without his weapons.

The Third has even praised him on his dedication to Suna, and his tricky killing move. It might require a lot of control, but he is certain his chuunin partner can master the bloody typhoon. After all, Baki is a friend of the wind, too.

…

A truce means that ninja mutually agree that they need time to re-forge their kunai. He decides that the best way he can help his village is to take a couple of well paying missions in the interval.

He has tried teaching, but Baki is the only one who has ever come close to mastering the typhoon of blood. Most of the others have suffered from chakra feed back and blown themselves to bits. Those that have survived learning the technique are mainly medical nin, and they never bothered to learn the deadliest applications, leaving the typhoon an incomplete healing tool in their hands.

Deep down, it angers him that the technique he took such pains to invent will die with him. The wind and the earth are the two greatest elements in the life of the hidden village. He merely has brought the wind element to a one shot killing art. That so few could be true enough friends with the wind in Suna is a blow to his ego. Wind and earth, opposing forces, but plenty sand nin can master the earth. Is the wind that hard to tame?

He's going to need the time this simple escort mission will give him to think about his technique.

…

He's never seen anything so white in his life. That's his first thought when he sees the other two non-merchants with the caravan. This is a B-rank mission, but the commission was good enough for him to ignore the lack of challenge. It's a simple mission. Protect the caravan from bandits as they make the journey between the breakaway Country of the Rice, or what ever that splinter country is called, and the Wind Country. So many new countries have declared themselves free of the five great nations that he hasn't bothered to remember the names.

But now, all he can think is that he's never seen anything as white as the skin of the two siblings sitting quietly in the last wagon. It's just observation of the new phenomenon that keeps his clear blue eyes straying towards the strangers. Observation and fascination. Soon they will be underway, and he won't have time to look at the odd people.

The properly wind-burned caravan boss blathers on about the two pale skinned siblings being his son and daughter. The Suna jounin isn't impolite enough to say that anyone with two eyes can see that the blond foreigners are obviously not related to this desert born merchant.

That can wait for when they discuss the journey later as men. If the eighteen-year old war veteran mentions anything now, he might scare away the fascinatingly pale creatures.

…

Travel is slow during a tentative truce. He has time to find out more about his protectees. The girl is older than her brother (Yashamaru's eyes are stone blue, darker and more thoughtful than her sparkling teal eyes), but otherwise they are so alike they might be twins. Both are retiring, but the girl is brave enough to go with him to collect firewood one night.

She is also, he discovers, brave enough to ask if he is a man or a woman. The question offends him so much that he takes his blank gaze from the surroundings and tries to transfix her with a glare, saying coldly that he _is_ male, thank you very much. She laughs innocently, and he is surprised how much that simple sound reminds him of his genin days, before he learned that kunai slid through flesh and jarred against bone with alarming ease.

The surprise paves the way for a strange warm feeling that fills him as she apologizes blithely. He finds himself saying that kohl is typically worn around the eyes of the inhabitants of the Wind Country, both men and women, unlike other areas. She nods wisely, as if she should have known. After all, she tells him, she has seen a few Noh dramas before, and Kibuki players occasionally wandered through her home village one their way to the theaters in bigger cities. It's not like this is the first time she's seen a man wearing make-up.

He nods, and goes back to scanning the surroundings. It takes him until late into the night around the camp fire to realize that the warm feeling is happiness. He's missed it.

…

Bandits are common in war torn areas. They will attack anything worth stealing. Rounin samurai, more cautious, will wait to check if any of the escort is competent. Shinobi will first ask who is paying them to take the bounty before they do anything.

When the caravan cuts into the Earth Country to avoid a massive storm that is sweeping the Wind Country they meet bandits. He kills the company of destitute farmers with little trouble, other than that caused by an amateur with a sword. Five shuriken sever the veins in the neck, wrists, and under the boy's unprotected arms as he rushes desperately at the group. The ninja of Suna is congratulated, and the girl cleans the scratch where the boy stabbed at him unexpectedly.

The she says his eyes are like ice. He gazes at the thirteen-year old bandit, still bleeding to death, and wishes he knew what "ice" was. From the girl's tone of voice he feels that she doesn't like it. His only response to the comment is that sometimes amateurs are lucky enough to get a few swings in, but this wasn't a difficult mission. She just looks away over the twenty corpses of the peasants, ready for burial detail.

The young jounin turns away, pouting. That night he drifts off to sleep wondering what ice is, and dreams of the lovely blond girl putting kohl around her eyes, and singing in the old language of Suna. He can only catch the tail end of the song, igaara no sabaku/i, before she races away with the wind.

In the morning he reminds himself that he doesn't believe in omens or visions, or any of that mystic nonsense. Certainly not love of the desert. Shukaku's land doesn't have room for love.

…

One night, around the camp fire, once the females have retired, he and the caravan boss are able to talk as men, late into the night. The siblings are refugees from the Rice Field Country. They were once part of a ninja clan, but their real parents had no wish to live in war, and abandoned the clan to live as peasants.

They were ignored, but strange things are happening in Rice, now. The ninja families are being decimated, children kidnapped, parents slaughtered. Darker rumors mutter about snakes being able to shed their skin under the waving rice stalks, now that the veil of protecting leaves is no more.

The clan the girls can trace their heritage to has been effectively wiped out. Their parents sent the brother and sister as far from the slithering shadow that darkens the land of rice fields as they could. And so they are to go to the heart of the Wind Country, and eke out what living they can there.

He nods, and says that if the caravan is willing to report all they have heard about the menace to the council of the Hidden Village he can see to it that they at least have a place to stay for a few days, before they move on. He can't think why he's being so stupid as to promise to escort these unvetted merchants to the hidden village, but he's confident if they turn out to be spies he can kill them all.

It is obvious that the hormonal boy is only eighteen.

…

As they turn south into the Wind Country more questions flood from the girl. The culture and mannerisms must appear very different to these farmer children, he thinks smugly. In the Wind Country even the lowest cattle driver holds himself like a prince. These are hard people, who have the honor of surviving the desert and the four winds.

From the north, he explains, riding along easily next to the wagon with the two foreigners, comes the Mountain's Blast, the freezing wind of night. From the east blows the Storm's Warning, wet and heavy every spring. South is the Sun's Caress, the mildest, laziest breeze that only stirs at mid-day. From the west is where the worst winds, the winds the desert is famous for, reside. The west wind is Shukaku's Breath, and it strips flesh from bone with its rage filled heat.

The girl asks why the west wind is so angry. He smiles confidently to himself, and replies that the greatest shamans of the wind country imprisoned Shukaku long, long ago, and the desert demon does not like to be imprisoned. The boy looks thoughtful, but the girl has a properly surprised expression in her large teal eyes. He feels smug that the simple children's story has impressed her so much.

Those who survive the world of the wind know that to walk the desert is to walk in the untamed lands where the spirits are still free to roam, he tells her. If a man can survive that, then the wind welcomes him into its heart, the sand is his ally, and the machinations of men can hold no fear for him. The desert strips you down to your core, he concludes. You cannot lie to yourself under the empty sky, the way you can in softer lands.

…

They stop at a stand one day that is selling grilled goat. The siblings look shocked as the men from the Wind Country buy portions of meat for everyone. The ninja looks at their expressions curiously. They tell him that in the Country of the Rice Fields they could not afford to have meat except on special occasions. They certainly never would have dreamed of eating meat from a useful animal like a goat.

He buys them an extra portion each, and smiles to himself as the girl exclaims excitedly over the flavor. He can't believe that at fifteen and seventeen neither of them has tasted goat before. He goes to bed feeling warm again. He might get used to happiness, he thinks.

…

A child learns from those who are older, and more experienced. The quiet boy is watching him, he realizes, as he pushes the two nearest merchants down to avoid the kunai whistling above their heads. Just bad luck that they camped in the same ravine as a couple of injured Leaf nin. Worse luck that they saw the Sand symbol on his forehead protector, which he keeps around his neck ever since his first mission and that puppeteer from Rain tried to strangle him with poisoned wire. These shinobi from Konoha must believe that the entire caravan is composed of Sand nin. The truce doesn't matter when you've got a comrade bleeding to death in a shallow cave a few meters away.

Two more kunai fly over his head and the wind catches them for him, responding to the barest touch of chakra. His hands shoot out and there is the sound of ripping cloth as the first kunai embeds itself in the armored green vest of the jounin in the group. The second one is in his grasp, and a third slides out from his red earth colored sleeve as he dashes for the scarred shinobi using the razor wing knuckle blades. The boy is probably as half as old as he is, and the smell of cigarette smoke hangs heavy around him like an armored vest.

They connect in a flash of steel stuck sparks, and for a few brief moments there is a contest of strength before the razor boy whirls, and jabs low with the knife bladed knuckle dusters, using them like daggers. He jumps, kicking out at the kid's head, his eyes calculating the situation.

A swinging upper cut that rips through cloth, and strikes off the mesh covering his thigh, even as his boot smashes into the brown nose, confirms his suspicion that he's run into one of the infamous Konoha taijitsu specialists, and the rest of the four man cell are likely to be just as impervious to sense. Oh well, it shouldn't take long to kill--

Shuriken speed past him, deadly stars of death heading straight for the wagon. His crystal eyes widen in alarm, and he jumps back, calling up a wall of wind from his palms (fingers to Rat, slide into Dragon, flip down to Dog, and those are all the seals he needs) to knock the shuriken away. The boy is still watching him, his slate-like eyes surveying the shinobi's movements. The Sand nin is standing by the wagon now. The two leaf nin capable of walking are at last using their brains and assessing the situation.

He can kill them both in five minutes, but not without losing some of the civilians in the caravan. His mission and his reputation war for a minute before he quickly forms the seals of the rat, dog, monkey, and rat again. The wind, glad to be of service under his chakra's guidance, grabs the frail boy from the cave, and drags the Leaf nin to the Sand jounin before the other three can blink.

The solution to this little problem is very simple, he tells them. They let the caravan through the ravine, and as far as the next stream, and he will stay there with their friend until the caravan is out of harms' way. Then, if they want to do this the safe way, they can leave. If they want to fight him, he'll start by killing the wounded kid in his grasp. And then he will murder them, or they will murder him. It's all quite simple.

In other circumstances he knows that this would illicit a laugh from at least the razor wing kid. They are all still young enough to be foolishly merry during a battle. But they've also seen too much death not to understand the eyes of a fellow killer. The wounded jounin spits blood, and pulls out the kunai. There is a gasp of suppressed pain, and then he rises from the ground, panting.

"One Suna ninja to protect a caravan of civies?" the chuunin asks. "Even with a truce on that's crazy."

"One four man cell attacking an unknown target with one of you so badly wounded he isn't even conscious? Don't talk to me about crazy."

"We protect our own in Konohakagure," Razor Wing Kid grins, as he pulls out a cigarette. "What's a wind user doing fighting hand to hand?"

"Evening the odds."

"Not much of a talker, are you? We're planning on the safe way, if you were curious. It is a truce, after all," smoke fills the clear air. "Seriously, you're gonna be dead, man, if you don't stick to long range moves with your wind elements. You're good, but you're not a taijitsu type."

"No," he replies in agreement. "The weakness of the wind element is that it is most useful at long range. Most ninjitsu users are so good they don't need to worry about annoying taijitsu. On the other hand, the favorite trick of a leaf nin, after the kage bushin, is the art of replacement. I wanted to act fast, and take you down before one of you idiots hit the civilians, thinking they were shinobi, too."

"Funny to think that the poisoners of Sand care about civilians," the third Leaf nin comments. He is non-descript, until the dark bags under his eyes can be seen. The kid should be in a hospital, not out on a mission.

"The desert cares for its own."

"Like that blond babe was from the Wind Country," the razor wing kid chooses a really bad time to open his mouth. Blank blue eyes become freezing cold, and suddenly the hostage screams, as blood dribbles from his mouth. The Sand nin has closed his hand into a fist.

"One should speak of women with respect. It is a lesson every child in Suna learns early," the red haired teen comments emotionlessly. "It is good for you that I have time to teach you this very important lesson, or you shall never deserve to be married to a good woman. Now, refer to ladies as mere "babes" again, and I shall have to do something really drastic."

The hostage drags in breath through tears of pain as the jounin releases his fist. The razor wing kid and his sensei exchange worried glances. Sick boy measures the jounin with his eyes.

"You're used to single cell work, aren't you?"

"We get by with what we have in Suna," he comments with no apparent interest.

"Wind and sand? Not much to get by on," Razor Wing Boy really, really wants to have his throat slit.

"I think your civies reached their point," Sick Boy says before the Sand nin's deadly hands can grasp at the chakra that controls the wind.

He looks up, and sees Yashamaru standing alone in the ravine, looking uncomfortably curious. He's disappointed, and yet mysteriously glad that his brave girl hasn't come. He doesn't want these immature Leaf shinobi to even look at her with their disrespectful eyes.

…

A few days later, Yashamaru asks, in the company of his sister, what it takes to become Sand shinobi. He feels a sudden jolt of cold down his spine, and for the first time in his life, tries to avoid the subject. Yashamaru persists in his quiet way. In the end he tells the boy and his sister the truth, feeling like he's raping them somehow.

All it takes to be a Sand shinobi is the ability to kill, and not feel it.

…

He asks the Third if he, the leader and most powerful man in the village, is serious. They are a security breach, after all. The Third raises a black eyebrow, and smiles, as if to remind him that he brought the security breach into Suna in the first place.

The Sandaime Kazekage turns his back on him, and stares out the window, before telling him that he is a jounin of Sunagakure, correct?

He answers yes, wondering where this is going. Is he being tested? He realizes he deserves it for practically promising two unknown people a home in the hidden village. Obviously the Third is still trying to decide his punishment. He prays it doesn't mean killing the siblings. He likes them (brave girl a bit better than her brother), but he is a shinobi of Sunagakure first, and for always. The safety of the village matters more than his personal feelings.

As if reading his thoughts, the Third asks if he will do whatever the Sandaime asks of him.

He nods, his face expressionless. So he is going to have to kill them.

Good, the Third replies, not turning around, yet he must have seen the nod, somehow. This is the greatest man in history he is speaking with, after all. He hears the suppressed laughter in the Third's voice as he receives his orders. He is to go out to the Star Watching Festival tonight, and accompany the two new comers, and above all enjoy himself.

The kohl rimmed eyes stare at the Kazekage, and he knows his jaw has dropped.

After he has been dismissed the Kazekage sighs quietly. The most ruthless jounin in Sand, and he, the Third, has to order the eighteen year old boy to have fun. Such dedication to the village is admirable, but the poor kid seems to forget that he still is a kid, and not a killing machine for the glory of Suna.

…

The Star Watching Festival is a celebration of darkness and light. Unlike in other countries, in the Wind Country, and in the Hidden Village of Sand in particular, they have no set date, merely waiting until the sky is free of sandstorms during the autumn. In other countries there are legends of lovers who cannot meet by the Sky River if the Lord of Storms forbids it. In Suna the legends are older, darker, filled with hope and blood, less drama and more demons. This is the land of Shukaku, after all, he explains to the siblings as they gather together under a lantern, Baki joining the group.

What about the lovers, then? The brave girl wants to know.

Some lovers die, some live, some curse in sorrow, and drink themselves to death, others live in joy, some who deserve to live forever are cut off in their prime, others watch the flower of love wither as their relationship goes on, he shrugs. The stars are the ancestors, they are the spirits, they are chakra, they watch over everyone, and ask questions of men when Shukaku's breath has stripped them to the bone. There is no room for love in that. Only remembrance. The Star Watching Festival is about light and dark. Music, stories, dancing, and laughter competing with introspection, murder, death, and despair.

They move off together through the crowd, finding the children's story tellers, and the sweet fruit sellers, and treating the girl and boy to everything that the village of Sand has to offer the civilians. By the great bonfire the music thrums, and pitches men and women to their feet to move in a most unseemly fashion.

His brave girl is grinning like a shining star, and he discovers that happiness is infectious, but he doesn't care. That night he forgets that he has a mission to slay the nephew of Fire Country's daimyo. It is days away, and the blond girl is holding his hand. He promises himself, when the war's over, he'll kiss her and court her, and do his best to make her happy forever. If he survives. If he doesn't, then he hopes some other man makes her laugh in the startled beautiful way she does, when he drags her out to dance.

…

Teal eyes fill with tears, and he just wants to look away. He doesn't want her to ask, so of course she will. Why not her. What's wrong with her that makes her brother better? Baki's watching from the sidelines, and he knows he has to keep his reputation up at this moment.

He turns his back on her, saying that she came too late. That she's too old to be a Suna shinobi. He hears her yelling that Yashamaru wasn't too old, and he sighs internally, because the quiet boy is watching too, and he will hear the jealousy in his braver sister's voice.

Cold black steel slices through the air, and cuts a lock from the blond head. He's covered the distance between them in less than seconds, and she hits the ground before her hair can begin to fall. He's on top of her, and has pinned her wrists with one hand. The other has a kunai at her throat. Her frightened eyes are looking into the freezing clearest blue, lined with careful black. Fear has her limp as a rabbit in the hawk's grasp.

He leans down to whisper in her ear. He can feel her shaking beneath him, and he hates himself for doing this to her, but it's important, and for her own good. He tells her, in the coldest growl he can manage, that he could have killed her in five seconds. Yashamaru can put up enough of a fight at the moment to stall him along for thirty. She's just too weak, even for a genin. It may not seem like it, but there is a war going on outside the Hidden Village. He only trains people who can survive.

He leans in closer, his body completely flattening hers to the ground. Her sweaty skin smells mysteriously of carrots, and the dry scorching smell of the desert sand. His lips flick across her ear lobe as he breathes the next reason why he won't train her. She is needed somewhere other than the killing fields. He doesn't know where yet, but she is ineeded/i there, and he's not going to keep her from that. She means more to him than just another meat shield. Because, and she has to make ino mistake/i about this, in the long run, that is all any ninja is. From the stupidest genin to the Third. They are all weapons that are going to die full of kunai.

He pushes himself off her, and stands again. Tears are on the edges of her lashes. He looks towards her quiet brother, and gestures to say that they need to get underway. He leaves Baki to pick the failed student up. He's never been more relieved in his life that someone can't fight for Suna. It means he won't have to watch her die.

…

She hits him. He returned to Suna two days ago, with Yashamaru covered in blood, but alive. He made no comment, other than to say that his newest student was a quick learner. Once he left the hospital room he heard Baki say that it was high praise, coming from him.

So, when they meet in the market today, and she hits him, he doesn't bother to block the blow. He just looks at her, trying to tell her with his eyes that this is why he could never teach her. She'll have to help Suna in other ways. Her angry glare hurts worse than the sun, and she turns away without saying a word.

…

He's twitching from the pain as Head Puppeteer Chiyo-sama injects the antidote into his blood stream. She comments caustically that amateurs shouldn't try to take on a team with the Slug Princess on it. He manages to bite back the retort that she wasn't doing so fantastically against the woman's swinging fists. He was fine until that Rain ninja decided to play with that acupuncture parasol. Weren't Rain shinobi supposed to hate Konoha more than Suna?

As the medic nin starts to stitch up his shoulder, she tells him he's going to have to head for Suna if he wants to keep the use of his right hand. He winces as the needle jabs into flesh and tries to remember how those tendons were slashed. Everything is a pain filled haze, but he's pretty sure he ripped a man's stomach out recently. It would explain the acid burns on his left arm, at any rate. Anything is better than thinking about the fact that these are stitches made with thread from old uniforms, and not stuchers. About how low their medical supplies have fallen at the front.

He thanks Chiyo-sama brusquely as she tells him she's done all she's willing to do, pops a few soldier pills, and heads back to Suna for a real hospital's help.

...

When he comes to, he's surprised to see the old lady again, and her puppeteering genius of a shadow. Shouldn't her grandson be in Suna? he wants to know muzzily. He was at the dry river when he went to rest in the shade. Chiyo-sama hits him with the flat of her palm, and says he was found by another returning team, and brought to Suna.

She knew he lived on the edge, and didn't like healers to waste their chakra, but he might have told them that he had a piece of shuriken buried underneath his left shoulder blade, and that the stitches from the last field operation had come lose. Was gangrene the fashion among youngsters these days?

He winces. He forgot. He's been using three soldier pills a day since that crazy trap user nearly crushed his leg in a landslide. That was two missions ago? Three? In a war you count each mission finished when you end up in the field hospitals. He wonders in a detached way, exactly how much damage he's done to himself while he was high on stimulants.

Chiyo-sama tells him to listen to the nurses, and not do anything for the next couple of weeks. Not even if the Kazekage asks. Not that the Third would, she sniffs. The Third is smarter than his shinobi, after all.

…

He can't help it. He asks jokingly if she's impressed by his scars as she tidies up around the medical bed. She gives him a hard, piercing glare, which he almost quails from. He looks down at his bandaged arm, as she angrily fluffs the pillow he was using. He wants to know why she came, if she just came to be angry. What he asks is if she's going to speak to him ever again.

She pauses, and flicks some of her blond hair away from her face. A devilish smirk that has no place anywhere near a woman's expression greets his question as she gazes at him. If Shukaku was female -- he thinks, suddenly both terrified, and strangely attracted. She leans over his bed and tells him one word: Beg.

As she saunters out, he wonders what his brave girl has been learning while he was away.

…

They talk more, now. He's no longer her protector. She, in fact, protects him. Protects him from thinking about the war, his comrades dying because he wasn't a god and couldn't save them by any mortal means, the stink of the hospital, Rule Twenty-Five. She protects him from it all, her lively conversation, her simplicity, her happiness are weapons that stave off the world.

When they talk, even when they talk about the war, it's as if everything is happening elsewhere. Her brother is playing medic nin somewhere behind the Fire Front, since he can't teach Yashamaru at the moment. Baki is doing Shukaku knows what, but he is confident in the young man. Baki is going to make jounin soon, the way things are going.

She is always thirsty for stories. He loves telling her them. It's something he can do from his bed, which he otherwise is itching to leave. She plays a mean game of shougi. He doesn't, and wishes he knew why he finds her tactics so fascinating. Maybe he has some kind of intellect fetish. One day she brought squares of paper with her and taught him the art of origami. She threatens flower arranging next, and he coldly tells her he is not a woman, despite the kohl. They both laugh, drowning in good memories.

While she's with him, he can create a kind of peace in his head, where happiness can bubble, unhindered by the needs of Suna. When she leaves he makes what plans he can to see to his village's safety.

…

Another truce, and this time he's watching her re-forge kunai. Funny to think, but it's only been two years. He's a man now, by the reckoning of the outside world. She's still a girl, in his blank eyes. A girl testing the balance of shuriken.

Outlined by the fire, her shadow rippling in the heat, she picks up a file, asking if the war is ever really going to end.

He shrugs. There are only three great powers left, Leaf, Rock, and Sand. Eventually one side or the other is going to run out of bags of meat to kill.

Is that what he really sees people as? Her question sounds scared, and she is trembling again.

He comes closer, so he can see her expression. When he's throwing knives at some Leaf nin, before executing a Rock shinobi sneaking up behind him, and then unleashing the technique of the sickle wind -- When he's doing that, then he has to. He is a shinobi, after all. A walking weapon. When he has to put people's lives in the balance, when there really is no good choice, then yes, he thinks that about people.

When he doesn't have to worry about life and death, though, then he can remember that shinobi are just men, with likes and dislikes. Friends and loves. Just like him. Just like anyone.

She tells him he doesn't seem to have many friends.

He holds up his two favorite students as examples. Yashamaru has survived to chunnin, and now the young man's equal with him and Baki, in his eyes.

She just looks exasperated, and asks scathingly if she counts as a friend, or did he intentionally leave her out?

He turns his face away, saying that she can be a friend if she wants. He was hoping for love, instead, though. He's blushing. She tells him she needs to think about it.

…

It's been far too long, he knows, and punches yet another set of targets, before slamming wind blades into cut and abused stone. The practice grounds are a great way to work off frustration, especially when Baki says he will not spar with his mentor. Baki watches from a very, very safe distance, his arms crossed in juvenile arrogance. His former sensei throws the occasional throwing star at him, in an attempt to provoke a fight, but he is too wise to take the challenge. When Sensei gets that cold hard look in his eyes he doesn't hold back or tolerate weakness.

Eventually, his anger is exhausted, and he picks up his weapons, and starts to clean up. Baki hops down a moment later to help. They work together in silence, until finally he has to ask if he could have been any more of an idiot. Baki's answer is not reassuring. Apparently girls find idiocy to be very cute and sweet.

He growls, and decides to go ask the Third for a good mission that will take his mind off everything. He needs the focused buzz of adrenaline right now.

…

It's been five weeks and three days, and he finally sees her again. She sighs when he grabs her arm, and tells her to stop avoiding him. She points out that she wasn't the one who took a mission that lead to the Water Country. She would have liked to see him earlier but he wasn't there.

Does this mean she's had time to think? He asks, trying to keep the surge of fear from overpowering the optimistic hope.

She nods, laughs at his expression, and leads him to a dango shop. He notices, like any surrounding aware ninja, that she wants to have the discussion in public. In a place where he can't throw kunai at her. Bad sign. She promises to pay for the food. A symbol of independence from him. Bad sign. She chooses a table conveniently near the entrance. She can get away quickly after delivering her verdict. These are all iincredibly/i bad signs.

She tells him, with such straight out honesty that there can be no underneath this underneath, that he is not a good person. He is not cruel, but he is cold and efficient. A machine, and people were not meant to be machines. He will kill young boys, or wounded men. It does not affect him the way it would destroy her. Therefore he is a bad person.

But that doesn't mean he isn't _also_ a kind one. He cares deeply for Suna. When he talks of the wind and sand, it's almost like listening to holy writ, coming from his mouth. And he is kind to her -- has been kind to her -- in so many little ways. He doesn't want her to become a bad person like him. She understands that now. Which is why he won't let her help Suna the way he helps Suna.

What he didn't understand was that she didn't want to become a shinobi to help Suna, or repay the debt. She didn't want to be helpless, she tells him, when he left on missions. She didn't want to be left wondering if he was going to come back or not. She wants him to stay alive, despite his focused and sometimes downright terrifying personality

He scares her a little, even now. He's very intense about everything. He doesn't relate well to other people. Many of the shinobi of the Sand would be honored to fight with him, but very few know him. He is incredible. Powerful. And such friends with the wind that he's barely friends with anyone else.

Which is the first thing that she's going to fix as his girlfriend, she tells him, eating one of the round sweets. He needs to get out of his shell more. He gapes at her, and she smirks, saying that the Third told her the best way to trap him would be to take him by surprise.

…

He tries very, very hard not to question the Third when he is summoned to the briefing for his newest mission. It's a simple assassination, and has nothing, nothing to do with the question: why are you interfering in my love life?

He asks anyway, because the Kazekage is giving him such a knowing glance. The Iron Sword of Law may be the technique that has made the Third so famously powerful, but personally he feels that the Third's most dangerous technique is the ability to look as though he's reading a person's thoughts. And that he finds those thoughts amusing. It's scary to think that this legend is only thirty.

The Kagekaze for his part, shuffles paper, and comments that when a pretty girl asks for help, it's rude to turn her down. And he was rather amused by the project, to tell the truth. Apparently the brave girl thought becoming a shinobi would help get him to notice her. Now, both he and the Kazekage know that he was already noticing her -- and the Third tells him that he needs to work on that blush, because it gives ieverything/i away -- but why tell the poor girl that, when the young so enjoy emotional trials?

Besides, he knows how much his ruthless jounin is a secret stickler for tradition, and it would hurt his pride to be asked, rather than do the asking. So the Kazekage just told that sweet girl how to chase him down. Okay, so he hadn't counted on girls needing to sort out their emotions iafter/i they had gotten the confession they wanted, but -- the Third shrugs, and says it all has turned out for the best.

The blank, icy look of his jounin is laughed at. And the jounin's question about Rule Twenty-Five is waved away. If he ever wants to be Kazekage he needs to learn to see underneath the underneath. He needs to be able to help the whole village. He needs to know what it is to care for something smaller than the village. All that focused attention of his is great, but there is more to life than Suna. Suna cannot be Suna, cannot be worthy of protection, if the people of Sand don't allow themselves to experience both sorrow and joy, and live their private lives.

He replies stiffly that he has no plans to be Kazekage. The Sandaime of Sunakagure raises an eyebrow, and shrugs. He may not be as powerful as the Third right now, but he is the only one to master the technique of the Bloody Typhoon. And he is already known for his ruthlessness. Paired with a bit of love he would become a kage that would do Suna proud. And the councilors who favor the conservative end of the spectrum like this young shinobi more than their current kage.

The Third is told that unless the Third dies the ruthless jounin of the Sand will follow him despite what the councilors say. He knows, after all, that he is a bad person. It is better that a good man wield him like the weapon he is.

The Third just sighs, smiles, and wishes him good luck.

…

They share their first kiss, a chaste peck, guiltily stolen with the taste of summer peaches still on her lips, behind a fruit stand at the Tuesday market. He's a shinobi, and they don't like doing anything publicly, and she's still a young woman who has to be mindful of her reputation.

The next kisses shared are more intense, as the two awkwardly come to terms with physical attraction. He's fucked women before, high on adrenaline, thinking they're both going to die in the next morning when the rush happens, or they meet the Grass squad that they've been trailing.

Most often he's been only half right. The women die, and he's still alive. But it's been that way since he was thirteen. That's normal. He doesn't know how to handle a woman during peace time, and he's worried that he'll break some unknown female law.

She, for her part, is a lot more innocent than she pretends. She doesn't know where this is going. Doesn't know about the kunochi who come silently as a squad hides in a trench, only to cry out a few hours later as their blood sprays wet and warm from their throats.

He likes kissing her. She always tastes like whatever she's been eating most recently, and her scent is overlaid with the smells of the earth. Sometimes wet and moist from the green houses. Sometimes hot, parched, and baked by the sun, as is natural. She never smells of blood and death. She never kisses like she's desperate to feel anything through the numbness of having seen too much, and knowing that it will either never end, or end too quickly.

…

At the Star Watching Festival, two years later, they manage to separate themselves from Baki, Yashamaru, and their small crowd of other friends that he's only just barely begun to accept. They find a flat rock that still holds the sun's heat, and lie down, hands clasped the whole time. They neck a bit, but mainly watch the fires spread out below them, or roll over to look at the stars spread out so high above. They whisper and giggle to one another, telling stories and asking questions. It's their Star Watching ritual. It will always be this way.

As the rock loses its heat, she snuggles closer to him, and he tells her about the blind monk who was following the Way of the World and ended up talking to Shukaku (and came out of the experience alive, he points out. That's the important bit).

His arms wrap around her, and they share warmth. She asks why he talks so much about Shukaku, when all of the stories depict it as some sort of devil. He tells her that Shukaku is a devil, but he is the devil of the desert. He is itheir/i devil. The people of Suna are proud of him.

She chuckles and asks for a new story. He growls and nibbles her ear in response, only to get a mouthful of blond hair. Serves him right, she tells him, laughing so loudly that someone might find them indulging in such indiscreet behavior. He tells her the story of the wind fox who came to the desert in the guise of a blond woman, and how she fought a wandering warrior, and when the warrior chopped off her blond hair she turned back into a fox, and should he chop off that hair just to check that he's not entered into a bestial relationship?

…

That creepy Sasori kid (he still plays with dolls, for crying out loud, and he's over twenty) is hiding a smile behind his hands as Chiyo-sama roundly chastises the ruthless jounin of twenty three like a three year old. He's ruining his girlfriend's reputation. She isn't even a kunochi. There aren't allowances to be made for this sort of thing.

They are indecently close in public, and people have seen them kissing. There are rumors that she's left his house early in the morning. Now he may be a powerful shinobi, and likely candidate for the ANBU, but the poor girl doesn't have parents to protect her reputation or virtue. Either he lay off with the romantic nonsense, or marry the girl. She'll end up getting harassed by her neighbors.

He nods resignedly. When he wants to cuddle (they haven't even slept together yet) he'll just have to sneak into her home. He likes watching her as she sleeps. She manages to even breathe beautifully. It is at this thought that he knows he is besotted.

He tells Chiyo-sama, cutting her off in mid-rant, that they will be getting married soon. He had been planning to wait until the war ended, but that didn't seem to be happening, so if he survives his first month as ANBU he'll marry his brave girl.

Chiyo-sama looks shocked at his bluntness. He can't help it. Muscles rarely used move, and he smirks, before saying that he intends to have lots of teal-eyed, blond, bouncy children with his future wife. It's a good thing that he's faster than Chiyo-sama. Poisoned needles follow his high speed retreat from the powerful shinobi's apartment.

It doesn't matter. He just made a joke, and the mirth feels so good.

…

It broke out of the compound!

It's heading for the residential district!

Summon the nin dogs! Run! Run! The prisoner wants a hostage.

She is just coming home with noodles for the dinner she'll be fixing for herself and her brother. She doesn't even see the man coming. He knocks her down, groceries falling from her bag. He smells of blood and shit and urine, a combination that makes for madness. Her mind screams at her as he grabs her by the throat.

Silent as shadows, a masked trio is just ithere/i. The man screams that he'll kill her. The leading mask, a fierce hawk with swirling red designs is behind the two of them before she can shriek her surprise at being captured. Needles coated with something that gleams an unpleasant yellow in the dim light stab into the man from all directions. She feels the breeze ruffling her hair.

The masks and the madman are gone.

When he shows up two days later there's a burn on the outside of his hand, and the faint whiff of madness is clinging to him as well. She asks what the burn is for, and he shrugs, saying that his captain is right: he should be better than to let civilians get in danger.

She tells him to take a shower.

…

Sometimes she sits up with a jerk on her futon, screaming. When he's not there Yashamaru comes to comfort her. When he is there, he does. Either way, she's dreaming of their deaths. Her brother is rational. Despite his abilities he's not usually sent on dangerous missions. Sand has lost too many full medics already, not to worry about what will happen if the shinobi with basic skills are lost.

When he has been there holding her in her sleep, he is honest with her. He faces death every day on regular missions. When he sits torture duty (but he's never itold/i her about that part of his new job) it's a different kind of death. But it's for Suna. It's for her. He's out there dieing day by day to keep the village safe. She can't seem to get it through his head that she'd much rather that he was safe.

…

It's actually been five months since his initiation onto the ANBU. But the invitations are out (the Third rolled his eyes and said: "Finally" when she stopped off to give him the invitation personally). The mission schedules have been cleared by the various shinobi in charge (the ANBU captain gave him a piercing look, and said that sane people didn't want to come back after they were married, and he'd have been refused, only they were so short staffed). Her brother is doing all of the cooking (she had tried to help but was shoved to another apartment to be measured for her kimono). Baki has promised to get him well and truly sloshed the night before (he glared, and said that nothing of the kind will happen). The wedding is tomorrow.

She feels butterflies in her stomach.

He just wants to get everything over with, and wishes that people would stop making such a fuss. It's giving him a deep, gut wrenching terror that no genjitsu user could hope to duplicate.

At midnight on the day before the wedding he gives her the "husband's gift." It's traditional for the husband to give the wife a gift that becomes her property forever more, to dispose of as she chooses. Traditionally in Sand, everything else under joint ownership of the couple technically belongs to the husband. He gives her the large clunky wooden box that has survived fire and thorough soakings filled with all of his mother's formal clothes and jewelry.

His mother has been long dead, a mission where she ended up in little pieces. And it didn't protect the genin she taught. Because he was the one who found them all bleeding on the sand together. His father was dead even earlier. He doesn't know what happened, really. There's some rumors about being a spy, and others about him sacrificing himself for his friends, and others about him committing seppuku. His father, as far as he knows, is a rumor.

A dead one, though, and so he has every right to give his peasant from Rice the old, beautiful silks, and the hair ornaments that will look so lovely on her, jade and turquoise wrapped in gold and copper. She smiles at him, and tries on one of the robes, red silk and gold thread chrysanthemums. The obi is black lined silk, and pale pink with red and gold chrysanthemums. She looks gorgeous, the kami of autumn, clear eyes sparkling by lantern light. The fact that the old robes were worn by women who were taller than she is doesn't matter.

He weaves a rope of topaz beads and golden drops through her pale, dried grass hair. His arms slide around her slim hips, and turn her toward the mirror. For the first time she sees the same radiant, exotic goddess he's always seen. The topaz hiding in her hair matches his eyes. They are bathed in lantern light and shadow.

They both silently agree that all of her landlady's measurements for her wedding kimono are sadly going to have been a waste of time.

…

He is surprised to find that women can make an incredible amount of noise when they don't have to worry about being caught. Or perhaps his brave girl is just noisy, and the other ones were quiet.

He isn't going to bother to conduct an experiment because she .:gasps:. when his fingers press into her lower back.

And she w.h.i.s.p.e.r.s a prayer when he kisses along her jugular.

And when they twine fingers she _hums_, and arcs against him.

And she moans}{moans}{moans}{moans, and it's like a flutter in her throat. A caged butterfly that tries to break free when he enters her.

He rocks back from her satisfied !shout! when she comes

When they're both finished, and drifting to sleep, he rests his head against her chest. Her heart beat is the loudest, most important noise that she makes. It's the first time he's made love to someone who isn't desperately trying to affirm that they are living. They didn't need to, this time, he thinks sleepily. She knows she's alive. She is the warmest, most tangible life he's ever been surrounded by and held in his arms.


	2. Eagle

**Author's Note:** Whoo, so, for those of you who were familiar with my older work, you'll probably have noticed that my writing style has changed. A lot. Don't worry, this was entirely an experimental piece for me. I was just testing out the drabble format. Although I can say I'm happy that it turned out so well, this kind of present tense, semi-pretentious symbolic lack of names style is not what I will be writing in the future. It worked for the story I was trying to tell, but in the long run, it's annoying to read. Now that I'm back on FF.N you can expect to see more writing from me, and some regular updates, until school eats me alive. And yes, that does mean that Stupid School Project will be updated after 4 years. I have several new chapters for it, although I cringe to look at some of them as they were written several years ago, and well, my writing has vastly improved in my estimation. So, the newer chapters are much less cringe worthy. Huzzah.

...

It's funny to know that he has a warm meal to come home to after this. A hot shower to wash off the grit. A home in the village. Friends who care. Someone who cares about more than the mission. Someone who is distanced from this blood of his, pooling on the lacquered wooden floor as he desperately grasps his arm. The warm comfort he thinks of must be a dream. A dream he has to protect at _any_ cost.

The boy (and yes, it is a real boy, _years_ younger than he was when he made jounin) smirks, black eyes and black hair and black clothes. He is a little shadow. A shadow that snuck up behind him while he was crushing an adult's heart, only to stab his arm with a kunai. And he's just a genin.

"We protect our own," he says loudly.

His female teammate grins with sharp fangs, standing protectively over the body of their fallen sensei. He knows how Konoha organizes its genin squads. Where's the third one?

The air screams a warning as metal slashes through it with wild abandon. He flips backwards and his wounded arm closes around the throat of the shuriken throwing genin.

"Itachi-kun!"

"He's got it covered, Shisui-kun. Protect the princess. I'm gonna try to fix sensei!" The girl is stupid, speaking of the dead like they can be brought back. Speaking her orders out loud. But he was an idiot for having concentrated on the adult before making certain that the kids couldn't get in the way.

His arm is squeezing tightly, and the boy (Shukaku's pity, but this kid can't be much older than five. What the Hell is Konoha thinking?!) is going blue around the lips. Wind howls around the fingers of his free hand, and he brings them up and drives them into the boy's stomach. There are three seconds, where the skin's elasticity is tested and ripped to shreds by the small _concentrated_ tornadoes. And then he's holding onto the pillow from the princess' bed, and it explodes in a blast of feathers as the wind rips into it.

"Shit! Itachi-kun, are you alright?"

The dark haired _child_ is bleeding on the bed, his lined face white with pain, and his teammate makes the fatal mistake of rushing to his side. "What was that?!"

"It's Sand's Wind Rider," the girl grunts, trying not to breath in the feathery storm. "Close combat with wind element techniques, and typically rips his opponents apart with wind. Itachi-kun's lucky to have thought of the replacement technique. Asuma-san told us during the briefing not to engage him if he showed up, and get back up instead. At least he's typically known for working alone, that's what Asuma-san said, right, sensei?" she shakes the bloody, broken body. "Where's that freaky ANBU guy who's supposed to be back-up?!" the girl's voice has climbed to a near shriek.

The one called Itachi is the only one who thinks like a ninja, because he shoves Shisui away, croaking breathlessly: "He'sss use -- the feathers -- cover. Shisui -- the Princess!"

But it's too late. He's in front of the terrified girl. Only she's not terrified. She's only five. She doesn't know what death is yet. His gloved hands grab her dark hair. His tanto-gato slices through her soft white neck. Blood sprays everywhere. His mission is complete and the genin Shisui screams in horror. One less child in the line of succession in the Fire Country. Eventually they will topple.

He breaks through the nearest paper screen, and then cuts a wall to pieces. The castle is situated on a cliff above the forest. He plummets. Smearing his fingers with blood from his arm he quickly shouts: "Kuchiyosek no jutsu!"

Akahane catches him, his massive wings beating strongly in the night air. The giant hawk isn't the Sky Lord, but they have a good working relationship. The summoned bird chuckles as he holds on tightly. "Caught yourself a little lamb, did you?"

"Well, the hunt was good," he breathes out. "I'm gaining notoriety, too."

…

He re-reads the scroll, and then passes it over to his wife. The Third nods. She looks troubled. His gaze is focused inscrutably inwards. She looks imploringly over to her Kazekage. They think she's pregnant, she whispers. She wants her husband to _live_ to see fatherhood.

He stands, and nods to the Third. He accepts the mission, and the promotion that will come with it if he succeeds. The scroll is placed on the desk. They leave. His former captain's mask still glints next to the scroll, shining like a white beacon.

That night she hugs him from behind, wrapping his arms tight to his sides as she yells at him, burying her head in his shoulder blades. He stares out the window at Suna, washed in blue and white from the moon. It is incredibly beautiful. It takes his breath away. More than her names and desperate anger can hope to affect him.

Eventually she begins to sob the same word over and over. Why, why, why.

He looks at Suna, and states quietly that his captain is selling Suna's secrets to other villages. If he kills the former ANBU before vital information is delivered, then he can protect the village. That's what matters. Protecting Suna. Protecting her. Keeping the village strong for his children. That's all that really matters, in the end.

The captain was an interrogation specialist! She reminds him. The plan he and the Third cooked up relies on his body being stronger than anyone should have to test.

All ANBU captains go through a trial by fire, he replies, turning to kiss her tear soaked face. That's why the ANBU is the arm of the Kazekage. The true Iron Sword of Law. And the captain betrayed Suna. There is no worse crime. It's his duty to bring death to the man.

And after? She asks, not willing to be assuaged with the platitudes tonight.

If it helps Suna, then it's his duty to fill the vacancy his captain has left. He serves the Third.

…

This was not going to plan, he thinks as the needle is jammed into his arm. Truth serum, he is told. And a few other things. Mostly experimental, but as the captain comments, he's the perfect guinea pig. He's always lived on the edge, and is stubborn as a mule.

His captain and a shroud swathed ninja from the Earth Country, who takes the information the captain provides in small trickles, have a small hut on the outskirts of Soushomo, a fairly large city and close to the border. They don't really need information from him. They have the captain for that. No, he is just the toy lab rat.

The swathed ninja has a younger counterpart who joins their merry little party over the days. He grins at the Sand nin strapped to the chair, and makes comments about how beautiful Suna red hair is. The older Rock nin tells him that rape only happens if the specimen is particularly uncooperative. He shouldn't get excited. The captain says nothing, and just checks that the chakra draining seals are still perfect.

…

He's been there two weeks. His collarbone is broken. There are cuts and burns all over his skin. One of his eyes was nearly taken before the Rock nin reminded his apprentice that the specimen needed to be as physically intact as possible. He's gotten used to the sensation of choking on his own blood.

When the three are together, the daily abuse is fairly thorough. The real danger is when his captors come alone. Each of the three has their own requirements from his body, and alone they become uncontrolled.

His captain beats him black and blue with his bare fists on occasion. On others he'll light up, and offer the prisoner a cigarette. Apparently part of using him is personal to the Captain. The Captain's son blew himself apart trying to master the bloody typhoon.

The boy from Rock is just a sadist. Simple and twisted as a corkscrew. He does all the cuts, and burns. When they're alone, his feverish black eyes sparkle with delight, and he usually sits on the Sand nin's lap, practically dry humping. Sometimes he slaps his victim's head back and forth, before putting long painted fingers through the Suna red hair, and crooning praise for his pet. Other times he is merely satisfied with licking up the blood, kissing the burns, and biting the Sand nin's bare throat. For some reason, this reminds the Wind Rider of desperate kunochi, and he imagines women hanging from beheading wire as the torture apprentice grinds his hard on into the captive lap.

The old Rock nin is the true professional. He is the most dangerous. The boy enjoys this too much, and the ANBU captain has made this too personal. The rock nin has the same degree of detachment from the situation that he has cultivated to deal with the two weeks of pain. When the robed stranger comes, he asks questions. All eventually lead back to the Third, and how the Third operates. Suna's Wind Rider ignores the questions, and concentrates on the chemicals that the Rock nin pumps into his system.

Mind control drugs, the old man tells him honestly, a funny clicking sound suggesting that his carefully prepared wrappings are covering a face full of sharp teeth. He is not the Third, but the Wind Rider would be an asset for Rock during the war. And if he can break the hold of the drugs, then it will be fun to watch as his mind melts.

…

Mind control. It takes up most of his thoughts now. He whispers it during one of the sessions with the boy. The boy stills, and the smirks, lifting his lolling head by a fist full of hair.

"So that's what the old man is up to. You're to be our puppet. The village's doll. How delicious," and the boy grabs his cracked and bleeding lips, and kisses him, shoving his tongue into the man's mouth. "Don't worry, doll. I'll always play with you."

He gives no resistance. No encouragement. It's the easiest way to deal with everything. His mind leaves his body in a way. He's watching all his captors from various corners as they work out their frustration/lust/theories on the body strapped to the chair. He's only jolted out of whatever state he's escaped to when they move his body to the uncomplicated hole in the ground that serves as the latrine. Even when they feed him he's not participating. He supposes Baki would chuckle, and call this some big group masturbation, trying to take his mind off the pain eating at him from his spine.

Some of the drugs pumped into him cause him to hallucinate. Butchered bodies, rivers of blood. He's back at the front lines with his friends. And they all die one after another, until Suna is bathed in blood. And he's failed. There is nothing worse. Nothing. Suna is the most important thing in the world.

One day the boy comes in, with his henna covered fingers, black eyes, and hair pulled back in that tight green and brown ponytail. He toys with the Wind Rider's body, but it's more like foreplay at this point.

"Respond, doll," the boy smirks before kissing his Sand nin.

He kisses back, unable to refuse the order. It's more like a wrestling match between the two, than a real kiss. He's fully back in his body, trapped there, and responding the only way he knows how. The boy chuckles as he pulls himself away, licking his lips. "Well, well. Used to dominating, are you? And here I thought you were just a broken little sub who didn't know how to please properly."

The boy pushes on his collar bone, and his stomach turns inside out. There's nothing to spill, but the sickening pain makes him dry retch.

"Stop that, doll, it's disgusting," his captor commands off-handedly.

He stops in mid-heave. His eyes are wide, the thin lines of kohl gone. He's sweating and shaking with pain and what could only be termed as fear. The sadist grins. He knows the drugs must have reached their potential. Besides, the lovely body has been weakened by two weeks with little sleep, little food, and constant abuse.

"Don't try to escape, doll. You can scream if you want, though."

The ties are undone, and he falls from the chair to the ground. He must have blacked out for a moment then, because he's on his hands and knees, and the boy is in front of him, stroking an erection that only gets harder has the Rock nin looks over the captive.

"Now, obey, doll. It's going to be very unpleasant if you don't please me. Come here, and let's see how good that aggressive little mouth of yours is. On your hands and knees."

He doesn't think he has the strength at that point to stand, so that order is just fine. He reaches the rock nin, and rocks back on his knees to look up at the torture shinobi. The boy grins, before seeing something in his doll's hand. "What is that?"

The Sand nin lifts the scrap of paper for inspection. Horror covers the boy's face as he sees the ripped seal that should be draining the prisoner's chakra. But the hand has already slammed into his stomach, and blood is suddenly bubbling in his body, little bubbles of air appearing, and whipping themselves into millions of miniature cyclones. He doesn't have the breath to scream, as his lungs are ripped apart, and blood begins to seep from his pores.

The Wind Rider gasps as he finishes, and nearly blacks out again. Instead he rises shakily to his feet, and moves to tie the corpse to the chair. "Don't put your faith in drugs, _doll_. I'm from Sand," he tells the brat angrily. "We invented poison. You'd never have made it as an interrogator, anyway. You get too involved. You don't know what orders to give. Too bad for you that you were so easily manipulated. Would have been cleaner if you were the Captain."

He breathes carefully, trying to scrub the feeling of slime from his sweaty skin. Now for the waiting game. The chakra seals have all been disabled. He's rearranged the torture chamber to fit his liking. The hallucinations are only creeping at the corners of his eyes. He waits in a corner.

The captain walks into the poisoned trip wire strung across the door, and he's on him. The sickle bladed wind detaches the bastard's head. Normally he doesn't take trophies, but he wants proof. The old Rock nin can pick up the mess himself. The mission's complete, and that's all that matters. He walks out into the heat of the desert. Never before has he missed Shukaku's land more.

…

He passes out in a cave used for border guards re-supply. He comes to hearing voices and seeing firelight. He passes out again. That's how he spend the next however long, drifting in and out of consciousness (at least he hopes that he's drifting. He'd hate to think that the giant snake slithering over his body while singing nursery rhymes is really there. Or the fox that has plucked out his eyeballs and is juggling them is a reality).

"Sensei! Come quick! There's someone back here!" he winces, hearing a girl's voice, and tries to roll away, only jarring his collar bone, which promptly has him spewing bile all over his bare chest.

Kindly hands turn him over, and he feels the wash of a healer's chakra. Someone calls for blankets, and he feels someone cleaning up the mess. Sadly, all he can see are the shadows in Shukaku's star filled eyes.

"Someone roughed him up good. Is he one of ours? Yuri-chan, see if you can get Hana-chan back here. He's going to need the warmth of those dogs of hers. Where's Nara?" The voice is deep and full of compassion.

"He went with Hana-chan, sensei. He's still trying to compile that herb compendium, you know," the girl who speaks drawls, and doesn't sound like she approves.

"Sensei," a quiet voice quivers. "I don't think -- look at the forehead plate I found. We might be in a lot of trouble."

There is a pause, and then someone lets out a controlled breath. "Yes, Yuri-chan, but get Hana-chan anyway."

"Why? He's only some Suna trash," drawling girl asks.

"Hey, there's something else back here -- gah! He has a head with him," a third girl says in horror. He thinks it's the one who found him in the first place. His world is filled with fire and flowers.

"How clean is the cut, Nami-chan?" the man asks.

"Really clean. Must have been done with a sword. No kunai is long enough to sever a head without ripping through."

Finally he manages to summon up enough breath to whisper something. "Mission. Tell Sandaime. I did it."

"Rest, kid," the man tells him. "We can't exactly walk into Sunagakure to carry that message to the Kazekage."

"Rock?" he asks.

"Leaf. Medic nin training group," the nice voice replies.

"Sensei, don't tell him that stuff! He'll use it against--,"

"Yoshino-chan, he's drugged up to the eyeballs, and he's pushed himself too far under these injuries. He's not a threat at the moment. We'll be long gone before he can do anything," the warmth and care is still in the voice, but so is the steel will of a dagger.

"What the fuck is that bastard doing here!?"

"Ah, Hana-chan, you've met this man before. Nara-kun, come both of you, sit down by the fire."

"Fang Girl," he mutters deliriously. "But I killed that lamb already. Did that genin coat the kunai with something?"

"No," Fang Girl's snarls sound a lot more dangerous when he's helpless. "Shisui-kun's stupid like that."

"Is this the guy?" another male voice asks.

"Yeah, he killed sensei right in front of us," Fang Girl spits. "Let's leave him here to rot."

"Now, now," the nice voice says calmly. "This is not only a great exercise for you all, but it we can now cover the lesson on ethics in a practical situation."

"Yes, sensei," Fang Girl says unhappily.

"Here we have a man who is about to die. Our code of ethics says that we must treat him. Now, this is complicated by the fact that he is an enemy. We aren't in a campaign against Sand at the moment, but we have been in the past, and we probably will be in the future. If we heal him he'll most likely kill our friends in the future, he might have already killed someone important to you. Our goal is to save human life. So what do we do?"

"We'd be saving more lives if we killed him," Fang Girl said smugly.

"Would we? How many lives has he protected from death?"

"None!"

"You, Itachi-kun, and Shisui-kun are still alive, aren't you?" the second man questions.

Fang Girl falters, then picks up her argument. "But our teacher, the little girl --,"

"Your teacher. Was in the way. As for the girl. She was," he fights for breath, trying to keep his voice even. "A mission."

"She was five years old!" Fang Girl yells.

"You're just children. If you think that. Ask your friend. The one who thinks like a shinobi. Pillow boy."

"Itachi-kun," for some reason there's sadness in Fang Girl's voice. "He's got his hands full."

"He knows about missions," the Sand nin gasps. "You fulfill the mission at any cost."

"Really now?" the group's teacher asks, more to himself. "But we're medic nin. What is our mission?"

"Catalogue desert plants," a girl pipes up.

"Would healing him interfere with this mission?" the man asks.

There is a chorus of sullen "no"s.

"So we are brought back to the ethical problem. We are bound to save life. What will do more damage? Healing him, or letting him alone until the next Suna patrol finds him."

"Third option," the Sand nin croaks. "You kill me. Slit throat. Heart Stab. Take your pick."

There is a chorus of gasps. The Yuri girl stutters that it would be in cold blood.

"It's a quicker death. Than leaving me here. To be eaten by beetles," the red haired man replies.

"Asuma-san said you were known as the most ruthless man in your village," Fang Girl says. "Perhaps you should get a taste of your own medicine."

"From the looks of it he's had that taste already, and more," the other man chuckles, as if it's all some big joke.

"Tell me," he asks. "If I were the White Fang. Would you have the same problems. Deciding what to do?"

"The White Fang's dead," the medic says sharply. "He didn't understand what missions were."

"I'm trying to give an example. That you can relate to. I don't know if you feel the same. Way about Sand's Wind Rider," the title almost makes him laugh. "As we do about Leaf's White Fang. But one of my teachers. Lost her son and daughter-in-law. To the White Fang. She's one of our best medic nin. She would never treat a Leaf nin."

"Lucky for you, we're not her, then," the compassionate man says.

"Would your Slug Princess do the same?"

"Tsunade? Possibly. I would like to think she's better than that, though," he replies quietly. "Besides, I want a chance to see if I can pull out all those hallucinogens in your body. It'll be a challenge."

"But sensei, we already know that if he lives more people will die," Nami-chan protests.

"Really. Why does the mission to kill a five-year old girl matter so much to you?" the medic asks him.

"Because she grows up. And orders the people of the Wind slaughtered. Just like her father," he replies dreamily. "Because Suna's losses. Come from the Fire Country's diayamo. Because if it's not her who dies. It could be my students. My friends. My Kazekage. My wife."

"And that's why we heal him. Because if he dies, it's possible that all of them die. That's why we heal everyone who is hurt. Go to sleep. It will take us a few days to patch you up."

"Mmm."

…

"You have a wife?" Fang Girl asks a day later. He still can't see her, but at least he can breathe again, thanks to the group of healers. She's watching over him while the others go out to hunt snakes for lunch.

"Yes."

"She's a shinobi, too? A good one, I suppose. Someone who can match you."

"Shukaku's pity, no!" he replies.

"Why not?" Fang Girl asks, confused by his vehemence.

"Kunochi, all Suna shinobi, we're just kunai targets. From the minute we get our headbands we're marked by Shukaku for death. My wife isn't one of Shukaku's victims."

"What is Shukaku's pity?"

"Non-existant," he replies, smiling, remembering the last Star Watching Festival.

"You know, we're not stupid enough to _worship_ the byuuki," Fang Girl says contemptuously.

"That's because you've never met one. Shukaku is the desert. Wind and Sand," he replies. "If you're ever unlucky enough to meet one of the other eight, you'll understand."

She is exasperated, and turns away. He watches the light filtering into the cave as the sun moves across the sky. The illusions around his eyes are beginning to fade. Eventually the rest of the squad returns. He is given some snake flesh, and a lot of water. He drifts off to sleep.

He wakes again when it's dark, and the two men are talking among themselves. He still can't see them properly, but he can hear them.

"So, you think he was tortured? They could just be regular battle wounds."

"Not likely Nara-kun. But we only have to worry about his body. Suna can deal with whatever's wrong in his mind after all that."

"Hmmph. If he thinks that Sharingan prodigy of the Uchiha is the ideal shinobi they must encourage warped points of views in Suna. Bet he'd get along with Hakate Kakashi."

"Suna shinobi have to be ruthless, Nara-kun. They don't have the man power of the other Hidden Villages. Only Mist has fewer shinobi. This war looks bad at our end. It's got to be a waking nightmare for the Sand Village. The only reason the Wind Country is so big is because no one else wants to occupy the forsaken desert. They don't have the people or resources that we do.

"Imagine what that's like. Then imagine keeping your place as one of the top two Hidden Villages with no extras. They've suffered fewer losses than the rest of us, but fewer losses to us means a bigger percent of the population to them. We haven't seen _any_ Sand kunochi in the last year of engagements. You know what that means, you only pretend to be stupid, Nara-kun."

"You've been listening to Tsunade-sama too much," there was a hint of chuckle there, and then quiet. "So, we heal this guy, and let him go back home because his village might be wiped out in a generation, anyway."

"They've got to be bleeding white. They have both Rock and us pressing them on the North and East. They had Mist sneaking in from the sea until we flattened the Water Country two years back. I think the only reason they've held together this long is because their Kazekage is so damn strong. At this rate Rock will fall before Sand does. And hopefully all the daimyo will feel that their pride has been assuaged, and we can go back to being people for a while."

"Now, Dan-sempai, we're always people, even in war time."

"Wrong, Nara-kun. You may be older than the girls, but most of them know: This war has nothing to do with the shinobi who are the weapons being used. We're all mighty chakra gods to civilians. But gods that have no use other than fighting. The daimyo don't see us as any better than those super chakra weapons people talk about developing."

"The jinchuuryki," Nara-kun sounds pensive. "Do you think Sand's going to use that Shukaku thing? They are the only one, other than Mist, to have the ability to make a jinchuuryki at their finger tips right now."

"Why do you think I'm so scared of the idea of Sand being pushed to the edge? If they make a jinchuuryki out of that demon of theirs, all bets are off. Konoha might be destroyed. Besides, Shukaku is the most unpredictable byuuki. It might protect Suna and Wind. It might destroy all the countries. We don't know, and can't risk it. I'm just worried that Fire's Lord isn't cautious enough to think about this when he gives the Hokage the orders to destroy all threats to the Fire Country."

"You don't approve of the Sandaime, do you, Dan?"

"He has memorized more techniques than any other man in history. His personal students are incredible prodigies. Even the ones that were thought hopeless. But he believes that a shinobi's loyalty should be to their village, and then their country. I believe that a shinobi's loyalty should be to one another. Because in the end, we're the only ones who have a hope of understanding what we put ourselves through. Perhaps we're both wrong. But there isn't enough compassion in the world for those who stand up and fight. For those who end up dead for another man's pride."

"Heh. Careful Orochimaru-sama doesn't hear you say that. He may stop you from seeing Tsunade-sama, in case you taint her."

"Feh. Nara-kun, Orochimaru-sama is rarely even in the village any more. His research will hopefully keep him outside of Konoha's walls. Pity about that Anko girl, but if he wants come back to teach her I can't say anything. At least," the medic pauses, and then continues confidently. "Until I'm the Yondaime."

"Ah, the ambitious shinobi of Konoha," Nara-kun agrees. "If we can't all be geniuses then we haven't worked hard enough, have we?"

"Yeah," the medic sounds sad like Fang Girl. "Generations of murderous geniuses. We shouldn't be allowing these kids be considered genin until at least eleven."

"They say the ANBU is sniffing around Uchiha Itachi, you know. They at least waited until the kid had an age in the double digits before taking Hatake Kakashi," Nara sighs.

"Yamanaka told you?"

"Yeah. They wanted him, but he refused. But it makes you wonder how young our children will be when the spooks look for fresh meat."

"I really wish you hadn't said that. Look on the bright side: No Nara would ever be caught dead in the ANBU. Any more than our possession Yamanaka geniuses."

"Ever wonder if the spooks feel anything?" Nara asks eventually.

"Mmm? Well, they must, mustn't they? They are only human, after all."

"Sometimes, when I see Hakate-san, I'm not so sure. Uchiha Itachi's getting that way, too, and he's only barely mastered that Sharingan of his."

"Yeah, well, Hakate's had a screw loose since he found his father, and after what happened to Obito-kun, I think that the only place for the guy is with the spooks. As for the Uchiha boy, he's an Uchiha. Radical fanaticism runs in the blood. They only know one way to serve Konoha, and that's up to those red eyeballs in gore. That's the problem with having a blood line limit that's close to, but not as good as the Byakugan."

"Don't make me get into those Hyuuga twins, Dan-sensei," Nara laughed hollowly. "There's something off about the entire clan. Bloodline limits can't be copied, no matter how much studying is done."

"Do you know something I should know, Nara-kun?"

"Nothing for certain. I just find that Hyuuga not letting anyone but clan members heal them to be a fairly paranoid point of view."

"Everyone's welcome to their secrets. We are shinobi, after all. Come, I'll wake Yuri-chan and Hana-chan for the next watch. Get some sleep."

…

By the end of the week he is capable of walking again. As the Leaf shinobi start to pack up their camp, he shuffles to the open air. The sun hits his weak eyes, sending a cloud of translucent butterflies bursting around him. He closes his eyes again, and just breathes in the bright morning air of the desert. A breeze comes up from the west. This far north Shukaku's Breath isn't as terrifying. But there will be a sandstorm in half a day.

He lets the harsh warmth ruffle his hair. His bare arms rise with the morning sun, stretching out to touch the crisp blue of the sky. The kunai he carries with him slides into his left palm. Blood flashes in the air. A "thank you" to Shukaku for teaching him how to survive the recent horror years ago. And blood for the summon. He needs Nari, but the swift kestrel is the most playful and capricious of the Sky Lord's servants that he has ever encountered. The more blood the easier it will be to call her.

He slams his bloody palm against the air after he forms the seals, and the brown bird with blue lightning streaks in her feathers appears in a blast of smoke.

"Why, it's the Typhoon himself!" she grins, her beak agape. "Sky Lord, but you've aged since I last saw you. Akahane says you've grown into a right proper eagle, my little sparrow. Killing lambs and everything."

"We do what we have to, to defend the nest," he shrugs noncommittally. "And I have to get this man's head to the Sandaime," he lifts the captain by the hair. "Will you do it, Lightning Wings? I'm not up to returning to Suna for some time."

"Ain't got anything on my plate half so fun as dropping a severed head in on that damn group of vulture bait you call a council. And I'll tell 'em you're still alive. Want me to send one of my chickies to sing your sweet praises to that pussy cat you've been wooing?"

"Why not? It's not like she'll kill me any less for getting myself fucked up so bad, than she will for me sending a bird to annoy her," he sighs tiredly.

"Sure, this'll be great fun!" Nari grabs the Captain's rotting head in her strong talons, warping the flesh and skin, and begins to flap higher to gain altitude, before shooting across the sky like a bolt of lightning.

He turns around to see the head medic appraising him.

"We need to get you a shirt. And I suppose I'll have to heal that slice, will I?"

"Just a bandage. And a sandstorm is going to hit a little after noon," he replies, and totters back into the cave.

…

He's alone when Nari comes streaking back. "You need to get back to Suna. Right. Now," she tells him, hovering, none of her reckless playfulness coming to the fore.

He only pauses to grab his forehead protector, and tie that around his neck. Then he's running past that slouching man named Nara.

"Hey stop! You'll undo all our work!"

"I am going home," he yells over his shoulder, preparing to jump, when his body freezes, and turns around all on its own. He walks up to Nara, who is holding the oddest hand seal.

"What's going on?" the man asks, rubbing his dark stubble as if he isn't certain that he's done the right thing. The Sand nin finds his hand rubbing his own clean-shaven cheek. "We haven't finished extracting the drugs, let alone healing the burns. You're trying to break your collar bone again? And your legs in the bargain?"

"We don't have time for this!" Nari shrieks above them.

He tries to gesture up at the agitated bird. "Suna's being attacked, if Nari's behavior is any indication. Now. Let. Me. Go! I have to get home."

"You'll kill your--,"

"The only reason you aren't on the ground right now, Nara-san, looking for your eyeballs, is that you've treated me far more decently than I expected. Don't push it," he snarls, just as Nari dives at the Leaf nin.

Nara jumps back, losing hold of the shadow he wrapped around the Sand shinobi, and with that the Wind Rider is just gone. The bird breaks off the attack, and follows. Nara rocks back on his heels. His squad leader steps out from behind a rock with a water bottle. "It's good that he's leaving, anyway," the medic sighs. "We've completed our mission as well as we can, and the information he's given us belongs in the hands of the Sandaime."

"He gave you information?"

"Underneath the underneath, Nara-kun. It's what he didn't say. Besides, he told me what his captors were looking for on accident. This is very serious. You have no idea. Come on, let's get going."

"What's going on?"

"If I'm right there might be one less kage in the world by sun rise. Come on! It's two days before we are safe in Konoha. We don't have time for this."

…

It wasn't an attack. He wishes it had been, as he collapses in the ANBU hut. Suna is boiling with people like an over-turned ant hill. He's been challenged five times by men who've served under him all their careers. He spends another day in an interrogation chamber. But it doesn't matter. They have to be certain.

Suna. The Hidden Village. Suna. The Village of Shinobi. Suna. Protected by the Wind's Shadow. Only not any more. The world has fallen. The Kazekage, master of Iron Sand, wielder of the Iron Sword of Law, is missing. He has been missing for nearly two weeks. No one knows where he is.

He walks home like a puppet with his strings breaking. It doesn't matter any more that he has been missing for four weeks. That he still has flashes of illusions at the edges of his vision. Nothing matters. His Kazekage is missing.

…

He shuts up the doctors with a glare. His formerly frozen blue-green irises are gone. The pupils have contracted to a permanent size. He'll never get back the vision he once had (they've told him that he'll be completely blind in the dark, and bright light will not be a pleasant surprise), but the illusions are gone. That's all that matters. The skin on the bottom of his feet (he wore most of that off running to Suna, which was stupid beyond stupid) is regrowing. Everything else has been stitched up or bandaged. His wife isn't here, and at this moment she's the only one who can stop him.

He gets out of the hospital bed, gets dressed in the mesh and earthy browns he prefers, and walks (limps) the streets of Suna, taking the pulse of the city. He winds up at his house, and sneaks in to grab his falcon's mask. Then he walks into the council chamber, pushes past the guards, and opens the doors himself. The old and young men look up, surprised, and uncertain like lost sheep. One rises to question querulously what he thinks he's doing.

Why, he's the Captain of the ANBU. The Kazekage is missing. He thinks he's giving the report on the situation, and pulling all of the search efforts together to co-ordinate the damn thing. In other words, he's being useful. What about them?!

His hands slam down on the table top, and he begins to harangue the councilors under the grim expressions of the First and Second's statues. So far the only division in Suna that's doing what it's supposed to is the Medical division.

And they aren't doing a spectacular job at that, Chiyo-sama comments dryly, eyeing his bandaged form with an expression that says she'll put him back in the hospital kicking and screaming after she's done having fun listening to him yell at the venerable sages.

The ANBU, and consequently the Suna police force, are running around like headless chickens, he continues. Now, this is understandable, as the ANBU didn't have a functioning captain until this morning. But why didn't they appoint a temporary captain in the absence of someone at the head of the elite corps of shinobi?!

The treasury is trying to put commerce at a stand still until they can see which way the wind blows. Which would be a great tactic, only Suna lives and breathes trade. They need the merchants going about their daily business! Things are hard enough with the war slowing travel, don't make it worse by shutting down the village. Whoever kidnapped the Third is long gone, rumors are going to spread if they don't act normally.

He goes down the list of councilors, and then yells at the secretaries to bring him all the bingo books, and someone who can organize more than two things at once. He wants a full break down of everything.

And they can find him in the infirmary, ward B, Chiyo-sama cuts in, hauling him toward the hospital by the ear.

…

He doesn't like the look she's giving him. She just quietly traces the new scars traveling his body as he lies in bed, energy sapped by the long days. Legs to hips. Hips to chest. Chest to neck. Neck to back. Back to arms. She traces them all with cool fingers. Her teal eyes are dull.

She says she wishes she could hate their kazekage for telling him to do that. But he was always so kind to her. To them. The Third will return, won't he? she pleads with her husband. He will return just like her husband has, right? A little scarred and battered, maybe. But he'll return so she can yell at him, right?

He just rolls over and holds her tightly against him. He can feel the small swell where their child is, pressing against his (still fairly hollow) stomach. He can imagine that the three hearts, his, hers, and the baby's, are beating together filled with hope. His hand wraps in her hair. If the Third doesn't return, he murmurs, how can he be their child's godfather? The Third would never miss an opportunity to spoil a child like that.

That's how it all works out. Under the ruthlessness, under the killer, under the torturer, under the wind riding shinobi, he is just a story teller. Creating a lovely fiction for anyone who needs to hear it.

That night he dreams of Shukaku wrapping his tail around the Third, and swallowing the Kazekage whole. He wakes up in the middle of the night, and reminds himself that he doesn't believe in omens. Another wonderful piece of fiction.

…

It's been months. He's pulled things together, gotten Suna back under control. The council has decided to ignore the Wind Country's diayamo for now. The _civilian_ wants troops on the border, and they have none to spare. Too many are already hunting for the Third. He's not certain if it's the best they can do, but he, like everyone else, still retains hope that the Third will be coming back.

Until then, the world has stopped. Underneath the daily activity of the village, Suna is broken, and only waiting faithfully for the Sandaime to repair her. Despair covers the village. He finds himself wandering into the deepest cave bored into Suna's cliff, and looking at Shukaku's prison. It should have been a warning sign that standing near that murderous, hate filled object made him feel slightly better about life, and able to face the day.

…

Sometimes he brings his wife to see the demon's container. She doesn't like it, and says that Shukaku scared her enough in the stories. She feels as if the pot is watching her, which is ridiculous, right? Right? His silence never reassures her.

Sometimes he is alone in the cliff. Did Shukaku ever willingly protect the village? he wonders. In all of the stories Shukaku has done his best to destroy it. Except for the first shaman, who tricked Shukaku into the pot in the first place. Shukaku obeyed the blind monk, and was even friends with the man, as much as something of Shukaku's nature can be friends.

Sometimes he sees Sasori, rolling his eyes and looking grumpy as he waits outside the cavern for his grandmother. Chiyo-sama is the only one who truly knows anything about Shukaku any more. Oh, the sealing technique has been passed down, but Chiyo-sama's father was the last shaman the sand village has known, and he told his daughter _everything_. When she dies, the knowledge will go with her. No one wants to know about demons any more. Sasori certainly doesn't. He's like all other people in the village. Centered around his hobbies and interests, fully in the modern world, with no time for the Wind and Sand.

…

The poisoned needles whistle through the air. The only rain in Suna is always a deadly one. The puppeteering troupe move their fingers like dancing men, holding the western wall against the horde of Leaf nin.

While Suna's world shattered, Konoha pressed against the Rock Village. Now only Suna stands to rival the Hidden Village of the Leaves. He should have known, he thinks angrily, blasting air from his palms and sending men flying. The war could end right here and now, with the destruction of the village.

Baki blasts past him, the wind blades he so loves clenched in two fists. Leaf nin scream, terrified yells or pain and agony as they are sliced open from the outside. Throwing stars whiz through the air, shrieking the pain they intend to inflict. Kage bushin pop in and out of existence. By the east gate a group of expert leaf shinobi repel all attackers, steadily pushing inward from the center of a green whirlwind.

His fingers are bleeding from the number of summons he has had to make. Akahane is flying over him, lending him chakra as he calls on all the hawks and falcons he's ever met, blasting this way and that with the sickle winds. He wishes they had a shinobi who had signed the weasel contract. But the last kid who did that has died a long time ago with the rest of his genin cell, so he'll have to make do on his own.

Stars tilt and wheel overhead. The eastern defenders call for back up against one crazy taijitsu master, a jack of all trades, and one of Konoha's famous genjitsu adepts. He dodges to the left as fire balls rain down from above. Akahane zips to the right and then Nari's zoomed into the three men who all have the same dark hair and wheeling red eyes.

Had the same wheeling red eyes, because Nari likes the taste of eyes, and that's what she goes for first. He leaves the summoned birds to the three fire fiends, and rushes to the East Gate. Something green comes hurtling at him, and he ducks, shoving his hands up, and catching the leg as it goes over his head. With a quick shove he helps the man continue on, to land head first on the rock behind him.

And then cigarette smoke coils on the air, and bright razor wing knuckle dusters are coming in under his guard. He flips backwards, throwing shuriken at razor wing _man_, before slamming his fist into someone's cheek. His men are on the ground, either dead, or locked in their own minds so deeply that there isn't any difference. He concentrates on keeping his chakra rooted in his feet. He's used so much already he doesn't have much to worry about from the genjistu user.

And here she is in front of him. Another red eye, wrapped in so much white she's just asking him to throw shuriken at her. The black throwing stars are blocked by the razor wings, and he's kicked from behind by that green _thing_. His spine screams and he's back in the hut. Seals form, dredging up the last trickles of his chakra. Dark is descending in purple and orange, and he knows his sight is lost.

The wind doesn't care. It whips around him from the ground, upward, a cyclone shield. It knocks the green idiot away. The genjitsu girl screams as his deflected stars whiz around to strike her in the back. High above, Akahane shrieks. Wind spills from his wings and he plummets, sharp beak covered in blood, and slams into his summoner, a flash of pure chakra.

He opens his eyes, glowing blue, and grabs the wind. Where he glares, his chakra forms invisible blades, shields, and cyclones. The green creature jumps at him, and is knocked back into the bedrock. Razor wing man has already grabbed the genjitsu girl, and he hops over to the beast, who is _still_ trying to get up. Rock shatters as wind blades scream towards the trio. Razor Wings jumps back, and he's tempted to follow, but there's screaming, and Baki appears in a cloud of smoke, yelling that there's a kuchiyosek snake nearly crushing the Puppeteers on the west.

He jumps and runs across Suna's roofs, just in time to see the purple head of a monster Akahane's fading consciousness identifies as King Manda. A black haired man stands arrogantly on the top of the snake rearing over the West wall. The purple of the brilliant desert sunset bathes him in a royal swath of color, making him one with the snake.

He hasn't a hope. He knows that man is only too likely his superior, if he can both summon and control the ever hungry serpent king. But he has the energy now. He'll remember Akahane as he can when this is all over.

"Kuchiyosek no jitsu!" His bleeding fingers shove into the air above his head, chakra flowing through the blood to establish a gateway to another world. There is a crash of displaced air, and then the giant shadow is stretching from one edge of the sky to the other. He sinks to his knees on the roof of choice. Massive black wings beat once, creating a thunder clap, and a hooked beak lines up with the massive serpent's head. The fluffy white neck feathers of the huge vulture whistle as the Sky Lord wheels over the battle.

"**Manda! Eagle Queen sends her best greetings. She's been looking for your worthless flesh. I am afraid I shall have to deprive my wife of feasting on your carcass, however. I'm just too peckish, and you're outside your forest,**" the great bird booms over the heads of the humans, causing most to fall to the ground, covering their ears. The lord vulture dives for the snake, who rears, exposing poisonous fangs.

He's only glad that the sounds of the death and the destruction are covered by massive wing beats. Sky Lord will lead the snake away from Suna's walls. He can rest for a moment up here, on this roof top, gathering strength. He doesn't have the chakra left to do anything monumental after summoning the Sky Lord.

Nari appears before he's ready, a mess of bloody starlings, ravens, crows, and hawks following her like the beacon she is, her markings glowing unearthly blue.

"C'mon, Sparrow. Take from us! We're not as self sacrificial as Akahane, but connecting the Earth and Sky with you little human is fun!" she crows, shoving energy into his beaten body.

The east wall shakes, and he's running back, ignoring the lack of moon. Baki falls in behind him. Then his quiet student, kunai surrounding Yashamaru in a floating fence, jumps in from the side. Men from the ANBU fall in behind their faction. Somehow, by instinct, they know that the big push will come from the east, while the west is occupied by the kuchiyosek battle. That snake was merely a feint all along. A massive, purple, poisonous feint that could crush Suna on its own.

He's high. Chakra is in him, sustaining him, surrounding him with the winds. He's going to pay for what he's using tonight. But later. Now he's as close to being the Sky Lord, to being Akahane, as he can. They rush at the smoke, ignoring blood and intestines underfoot. They've all stepped on enough brains since they entered the war.

Wind howls around his arms as the group drops down, to confront the white masked group of Leaf nin. ANBU. Mainly. Razor Wing Man is there, too, cigarette dangling. Nara is slouched against the east wall, next to a woman who reminds him strongly of Fang Girl, except Fang Girl never had a giant wolf by her side. His eyes roam the group opposing them. Baki can take two at once. So can Yashamaru. His ANBU boys can take on the majority of the white masked team. But his bad eyes zero in on a shorter, slimmer spook, with a thatch of white hair above a red striped mask.

"Nari," he murmurs. "Either that's the ghost of Konoha's White Fang, or a relative. The rumored Hatake Kakashi, likely. You all: go for the eyes."

They leap as one being. Kunai fly from his quiet student, some deflected, some hitting their targets. Darkness unwraps from the wall, and he jumps to the left as the blob that is Nara-san shifts his weight. He remembers that pose, and angrily thrusts his wind covered fist forward, ducking under the other targets. The horizontal cyclone screams through the air to nail Nara-kun to the wall, impaling his shoulder.

The wind shrieks, and that's his only warning. He jumps high, twisting over the same technique, and comes face to mask with the pale blob that is the second White Fang. He can't see the eyes behind that white expanse, but he imagines they are empty. His fingers begin to form seals, and the ANBU mirrors his actions. Two sickle winds slam into each other, breaking apart.

He lands hard on the first step of the inner wall. His hands form seals in shadow, and he nearly is kicked in the back of the head, saving himself only by rolling forward, his feet kicking back to tangle in the fellow ANBU's legs, bringing him crashing to the stone of the giant steps. He flips back up, and lands on the man's stomach, cyclones swirling around his fingers and he drives the tearing winds towards the white face. A large boulder shatters and blows apart under the ripping winds.

He internally curses the art of replacement, and sticks his fist backwards into the armored stomach that just appeared behind him. He pivots, and rushes at the lithe ninja, hand seals forming behind his back, until he can bring the wind blades into existence to strike at the leaf shinobi. The man whisks away to the left. Three kage bushin poof into existence and head straight for him.

He privately thanks the genetics that gave the ANBU prodigy such a fair head of hair, or his weak eyes wouldn't be able to track him in the dark. The wind whispers the locations to him, and his left blade slices through two clones, as the right stabs into the chest of the real thing, with the familiar squelch and thunk when the wind is dispersed by running into bone. The third kage bushin slams into the side of his face with a punch that spins him backwards with its force.

Then the sky lights on fire, and the earth heaves. He whips around to look. Someone lit the residential district on fire, he thinks dazedly, as another building bulges outwards and explodes with a rush of flame. His kohl lined eyes widen, and the wind shrieks for him. The step crumbles as his anger forces his chakra to sharpen the breezes surrounding him, turning him into a man surrounded by moving blades.

Below Baki pushes the massive wolf off his chest, slashing the thing's face with his wind blades. Nari screams an angry battle cry. And then both bird and man are off, following the rage possessed form of Suna's Wind Rider, who barely touches the roofs under his leaping feet. The flames billow in the sprawling South Side. Leaf nin are swarming. Kunai are flying. Mothers and children are dropping like flies.

The world falls. The light gives him back some vision, but it washes everyone in gold. Each woman who falls is his wife. Each scream is her last. His fingers brush together, press, release in unconscious patterns of death.

He lands on a chuunin's back, forcing his chakra down like a fist, breaking the boy's spine. The first two men he grabs explode as the air in their lungs unites from right to left to rip the leaf nin apart. He dives instinctively under the shuriken. His fist shoots out, and releases. The cyclone tears through the street, sucking the fire in as it rips into the shinobi foolish enough to try to stop him.

He moves like a striking hawk, jumping, diving, falling, and grabbing only to release as blood fountains in the air. He was never so effective on the front. But this is different. This is Suna. It is precious to him, and he will destroy everything to keep the village whole.

The civilians are clearing the buildings and area as fast as they can. Fearing both the fire, and the man who fans the flames with wind, ripping into anyone who stands still long enough for hitae-ate to be identified. A scream, and he whirls to see her holding the burnt corpse of some child. Her eyes, large and teal, meet his black pin-pricks. Wind whips around him, carrying drops of blood in a curtain of red mist. The bloody typhoon.

Bright white light bursts over the village. She's still staring at him. The leaf nin jump away. A voice, amplified by chakra, rings over Suna. They have until noon tomorrow to decide what they want to do. If they don't surrender, Suna will be no more. He hears the message, but he's too locked into the horror visible in her eyes.


	3. Wind

**Author's note:** When I first posted this story on Ficwad I spent a long time at the beginning explaining that I was playing fast and loose with timelines when it came to writing this. To be frank, I am bad at math. I tried hard to keep identities ambiguous and unclear, so if it turned out certain leaf shinobi should have been teething at the time I wrote them as kunai wielding chuunin, I had an excuse. The first "chapter/drabble" of this section probably is out of sync with time, too, but not as badly, and after this, I tried very hard to make the time references match up (You'll notice that there is mention of the Uchiha murder, and the Kyuubi attack made in passing later on), so I am trying to make everything work out. Anyway, sit back and enjoy:

...

They organize hospital detail through the night. He works together with Baki to steal the air from the flames. The bird summons don't leave, but they do perch on the Kazekage's tall office spire. He shakes, sweating badly from chakra overuse, and his best friend, Adrenaline-san.

They recover the bodies of the dead. Both Leaf and Sand. There is a price to summoning the Sky Lord, and he knows the kuchiyosek hasn't forgotten, even if he can't hear the battle between the vulture and snake any more. It's night time, and although the Sky Lord doesn't have the limitations of normal vultures, he might have found a convenient perch to sleep on until the morning sun he loved came streaking over the sky.

They search through rubble methodically. Sometimes she's next to him. Sometimes Baki. Sometimes Yashamaru. Sometimes it's a person he's never spoken to before. No matter who he's working with, they search with a kind of quiet desperation. They never see anything that leads to hope. Just more bodies for burial detail.

The puppeteers are now the strongest squads, but that's not saying much. He saw Sasori in a corner somewhere trying to repair shattered wood, his young, beautiful face twisted by a cold desperation. When he looks in the hospital, Chiyo-sama is covered in blood, and the stink of death, but not so much that she doesn't somehow catch him looking, and order him to get some rest.

He doesn't take the order until he sees his wife trying to clear rubble around someone's limp hand. He helps, and once they call a burial squad over to take the shattered remains of someone (who once measured a young girl for her wedding clothes) he takes her hand, and leads her to a former alleyway which will probably become a courtyard.

They both sink into one another's arms, grateful for the reprieve. He closes his useless eyes, and places his bloody, soot stained hands on her swollen abdomen, and rests a grimy cheek there. Her hands close over his, one moving to run through his hair. Underneath their pain, shock, and desperation, the child kicks willfully. He smiles softly, and hears a tired, content sigh from his brave wife.

Minutes of precious blackness later, he is shaken awake by Baki. The mask in Baki's hand is half burned, but he puts it on anyway. He rises with his wife, and hugs her. They haven't had a chance to speak about everything. He's knows that he's due a dressing down. He let her see the one side of his life that she never was supposed to. He failed to protect her from that.

They head for the bulbous spire, and the underground council chamber. Three broken comrades. Yashamaru appears as they walk down the avenue. The woman reaches out to her brother and pale hands link. He looks over slightly, and for a moment he's eighteen again, seeing the strange, beautiful creatures, that must be cranes borrowing human forms for whatever reason.

Then his wife and student stop at the barrier of the door into the council chamber, while he and Baki continue down the steps. The council is grim. Those already there are drafting a notice of surrender. The treaty will be worked out on the open desert plain where the Leaf are waiting. He sits down, watching as his pride is broken, and crippled by a single scroll of paper.

Floors above his head the sun is rising. He's missing seeing the glorious sight of a desert morning to sit in this cold stone chamber, under the glare of the First, and Second, and newly installed Third. The stone maker failed to capture the humor that twinkled in his eyes. The faint smile that hovered around the corners of his lips. Oh Shukaku, he wants the Sandaime there. He's only the broken hilt of the living Iron Sword of Law, after all.

The scroll is shoved underneath his nose. He is told to sign this mockery. This plea of weakness, desperately asking that Suna be allowed to live.

"The treaty isn't binding until the Kazekage signs it," someone murmurs to him, as he reads the travesty.

"He isn't here."

"Well, that depends. We need to decide on a yondaime. You, as the ANBU captain, are currently the highest ranking military leader in the village. You will have to deliver this. Now, you may sign it as ANBU captain. Or you may sign it as the Yondaime Kazekage," the councilor informs him, making the man start.

"I would never. Sign. This," he glares at the parchment. "As. Kazekage. I will never give this so called _peace_ legitimacy. We lost over half of Suna's population tonight. Most of them were _civilians_ who burned to death. Konoha may have ended the great war, but Suna will never truly capitulate."

"Then you are still an ANBU captain. We will hold the trials for Kazekage once the foreigners are completely gone."

He signs the parchment, anger focusing in his veins. He gets up from the table, and rolls up the scroll, before heading out into the fresh air of the outside world. There he leans against the building, and looks up at the great expanse of blue. He wishes he could just grow wings and fly there until his frustration is worked off.

Baki looks at him. He nods grimly, brushing some of the soot caked onto his mask. Time to parlay with the devil. Two ANBU survivors detach themselves from walls and follow. Rumor has been spreading. People stop their work to stare. He walks toward the West Gate. It's where most of the Leaf nin are camped, now that the snake is gone.

He goes bearing a scroll of truce, and is stopped by other white masked ANBU. They want to know his business. "Surrender," he replies bitterly. The Leaf shinobi nod, and two lead him to a tent that smells horribly of field hospital. Harsh soap, boiling pitch, and blood.

On a mesa to the right of the camp on this stretching desert plain a large black shadow beats its wings, and he can feel the thunder as the Sky Lord takes off, swooping in quickly on a down draft. The giant bird back-wings, and he can only feel proud that he isn't knocked off his feet by the harsh gusts unleashed as the Sky Lord lands next to him.

A blond woman comes running out of the tent, bloody, and not looking happy.

"Who let this feathered turkey get so close to the hospital?! Orochimaru-kun, I thought you said you'd handle it last night!" she yells at the black haired snake rider, who comes up from the left, languid and boneless, a bandage wrapped around his head, stained with blood.

"Hey, hey, Tsunade-chan, don't blame Orochimaru 'cause his snakes needed a bit of help to keep that thing at bay. It's not like snakes are great flyers," another man protests, coming from the right at a run, a giant kuchiyosek frog hopping behind him.

"I take it I am in front of the Hokage's three students, then," he interrupts the diatribe that is waiting to spill from the woman. Take control of the conversation. It's all he can do, after all. "You speak for the Hokage? Then I can be assured that you can take this offer of surrender to the Sandaime of Konohagakure."

He holds out the scroll, forcing one of these shinobi giants to step forward, and take it. The white haired man who is built like a chunk of stone accepts the scroll, but passes it over to the snake man on the left. The elegant shinobi opens the scroll, and reads it. His wide mouth twitches, and he fixes the Sand nin with a golden gaze that is so reminiscent of the desert snakes.

"This isn't binding until the Kagekaze has signed it," his voice is earthy, the words sliding smoothly from his mouth like honey covered pieces of flint.

"You must have noticed that you were not repelled by the Iron Sword of Law," the ANBU's voice is dull, the pain of admitting to a foreigner what he can't admit to himself, the weakness of the village, feels as though it is costing him something vital. "The Sandaime of Sunagakure is dead," he bites the inside of his cheek, angry at the truth.

Orochimaru's wide mouth smiles, an edge of triumph in the self-satisfaction he indulges in. Tsunade sighs, but does not look surprised. The final Sannin's eyes widen, honestly shocked.

"Dead men can't sign papers, and we don't have a Yondaime, yet. You will have to be satisfied with the signatures that are there."

"We are," Tsunade cuts in before either of men with her can say anything.

"But on one condition," Orochimaru grins, and the ground trembles, as the blunt nose of Manda appears, pushing through the shifting desert sand. "We get your dead and dying."

"**They were already claimed**," the Sky Lord thunders, and the air is filled with masses of black, wheeling and circling. "**And Suna may have fallen, but Manda lost his claim to mine last night.**"

"All summoning requires sacrifice," the Sand nin adds blankly. "In my case, the Sky Lord's children are allowed to feast for a day undisturbed."

Tsunade shrieks angrily, and rushes into the hospital. A doctor forever, worried about her patients.

"Compromise of the defeated," the Sand nin tells the remaining two. "Your kuchiyosek may have all the Leaf nin left in the desert by sundown."

"And Sand nin," Orochimaru hisses, somehow pleased by events.

"There won't be any left outside Suna by sundown. And you're not going back into our village just to feed your pet."

The frog man just looks sick, as the birds blanket Suna and spread outwards.

…

In the end, the peace is binding. He organizes rebuilding Suna, but more than the buildings are shattered. No one wants to come to the broken Village of Sand. Their population is decimated. Their talented shinobi are stripped to the bone. The trials of the Kazekage only have three entrants. His wife makes only one request: Don't use the Bloody Typhoon. He doesn't. He still becomes Yondaime.

The stars wheel over head, so far away, and cold in the blackness of Shukaku's night. He watches them one night from a roof, clad in his normal earth tones. That's what Suna was truly hit by, he thinks. Shukaku's breath, stripping her to the bone. Well? What do the stars have to ask this broken remnant that survived the western blast?!

The stars are silent. And cold.

…

When he gets news that she's gone into labor he hands everything to his subordinates, and runs to the hospital in a swirl of blue and white. He promised her he'd be there. Ten minutes later he's backing hastily out of the ward, his eyes wide as she curses him with inventive fury between screams of contraction pain. One thing she makes abundantly clear is that they are never having sex again.

He hides in the waiting room for the next _twenty seven_ hours. He is never putting her through this again, he promises himself, counting the grains of sand that he can see on the floor. Then a nurse comes to tell him that it's a girl. He's allowed to see the tiny thing, struggling with her dun colored blanket in her sleep. For the first time since he was told his captain had defected he feels warm inside.

Maybe he'll try to convince his wife to have sex at least once more.

…

His world revolves around paper, and missions. He misses his wife, and the tiny little girl (Temari is so sweet, so loud), but they don't have the shinobi to spare, and he ends up taking missions to free up his shinobi for others. Many councilors put off their robes of statesmanship, and pick up kunai again. It's how they can get by in Suna, on wind and sand.

He visits his Shinobi in the hospital when they come back half butchered. Just like the Third _couldn't_ do, because it hurt him too much, and there were too many visits to make. If it hurts the Yondaime he just buries the pain each time he relines his eyes with kohl in the morning. Funny that having more nin in the hospital is something he would think of as a good sign right now. It would mean that there were enough nin to get hurt in the first place.

…

One day when he walks into his apartment, and into the most deadly of traps. His wife standing up to her elbows in rice as she prepares onigiri, Temari looking blankly over her shoulder from a baby sling, and his brother in-law coming towards him with a calculating expression and a piece of rope. Yashamaru loops the rope quickly over his shoulders, and drags him down to the underground bath houses. While soaking on the men's side of the pool (still with the rope binding him, because Yashamaru doesn't trust him to stay there on his own), his brother-in-law tells him he is going to sit down, have a meal with the family he hasn't seen for two months, and relax.

Sweat and blood is washed off, and he is dragged back to the apartment to a _really_ good dinner. Yashamaru disappears with Temari as soon as she becomes fretful. He reappears, magically, when one of the Yondaime's aides come to the apartment to ask for a signature. The Kazekage is surprised by his own laugh as Yashamaru glares with his blue-grey eyes, and says quite seriously that they have the Kagekaze now, and they aren't giving him back until they know he won't go berserk from the stress of running Suna.

Much later as his wife is massaging knotted muscles in his back, he asks if they're going to do this a lot, because it's really going to make the paper work pile up.

She tartly tells him that they'll do this if they haven't seen him for months. It's not good for Suna to have a Kazekage working himself into the ground. She also is going to put a stop to him sleeping at the office.

He raises non-existent eyebrows, and says that sometimes he needs to work all hours.

She counters that she will knock him unconscious, and drag him to the bedroom if she has to.

It's dark in their room, and he can't see her. But that doesn't stop him from writhing beneath her fingers, twisting around, and lunging at where he thinks she is, until she's flat on her back, with his hands pressing her into the futon.

Does she promise? He growls in the familiar tone, before kissing her roughly. The way his blind hands fumble up her sides makes her giggle. She has to help him, blind in the dark, but enthusiastic (sometimes it's her cheeks or nose he brushes with his mouth, once her chin, and each time he misses she laughs, and he can't decide between listening to that wonderful sound, or touching her beautiful lips again).

Even later they drift off to sleep, embracing each other, both very, very thankful that Yashamaru loves his sister enough to take care of Temari tonight.

…

He reads the report again. He doesn't bother to ask Tsusho (his replacement in the ANBU, and he knows a better captain than he ever was) if he is certain. Of course he's certain. They've been suspicious since Hiruko went missing, and Tsusho doesn't mess up this sort of thing. He just doesn't want it to be true. He ignored that some of the leaf nin's bodies went missing from the Feast of Birds. He can't ignore it if it's his own people, though. Sasori no Akasuna is useful (and creepy) but not that useful.

This will destroy Chiyo-sama. Worse than her son's death. Worse than surrendering to Konoha. Sasori is the last thing she has in the village that she cares about. Luckily her brother's here, so she won't commit seppuku, and he can still use her if the situation is desperate. But Chiyo-sama won't be presiding over the hospital, or researching how to make better puppets, or concocting poisons ever again. Damn Sasori! They could have over looked his human puppets if only he took his pick of victims from outside the village. He was an amazing assassin, and the loss of Chiyo-sama means two less genius-level shinobi in Suna. Damn Sasori!

He reaches out for the brush, and signs off the report in red ink. Sasori of the Red Sands is a missing nin (not that Sasori knows this yet), and Suna's ANBU knows what to do. He has to deliver the information to Chiyo-sama personally. After all, it's what a Kazekage does.

…

On one of his sojourns through Suna he stops at the cavern mouth. Is it just fancy, or can he feel Shukaku's burning star eyes on him? He remembers the promise he wrung out of Chiyo-sama, and grimaces, before moving on to check the reconstruction of the buildings in the South Side. One favor. That's all he gets. All that Suna gets. One last favor, be it heal or kill, Chiyo-sama will grant it. Otherwise, he has to leave her alone.

He just prays to himself that he can leave her alone forever.

…

Deep in the wooden box of things that escaped the fire of their original house he finds what he's looking for after a long time. He pulls out the item from the charred chest, and quickly stuffs it behind his back.

He pads the corridors of the Kazekage's suite, past where his wife is trying to grab some sleep while she can. Temari is driving her ragged, and there might be a second bundle of screaming joy along the way in another eight months. Yashamaru has finally stopped playing babysitter of both the Kazekage and his niece. He's on an A-Ranked mission in Grass, and the Kazekage doesn't know when he can tell his wife that he doesn't know if her brother will be coming back. Baki is on an S-Ranked mission, and the Kazekage can't help him this time. At the moment there is nothing he can control in his life to make it better for those few he still cares about as a person, not as Kazekage.

He slips into Temari's room, and looks down at the sleeping child. As if in response to his presence, she shifts, squirms, and opens large blue eyes which are already going teal. He smiles at her and brings out the teddy bear from behind his back.

It was his once, he tells her. And before that his mother's. She had brown hair, and liked to sing. The teddy was her first audience. And before that, this toy belonged to an uncle who came to the country of the wind from a far away land. It's crossed seas and oceans to get to her. This teddy has seen a lot.

She grasps the brown bear solemnly, and proceeds to attempt to eat one of its legs. The Yondaime watches, bemused. Either he's going to have an unholy hell raiser for a daughter, or she hasn't reached the age of abstract thought. He doesn't know when that happens in children.

Temari yawns, and curls up with the bear, now trying to eat her own thumb. He stands over her, watching for the longest time, wanting to reach out and hold her, but not certain how to do that, or even if he should. It's funny, but he realizes the only time he's ever been this close to young children is just before he kills them. He continues to watch over his daughter, wishing he knew what to do.

…

He looks at Tsusho. The man was cut to pieces and burned alive. He still managed to crawl back to Suna, and make it as far as the hospital. His mission wasn't completed, but it doesn't matter right now. It might be the last time he can think that, the Kazekage knows. Suna needs a completion rate that makes the other villages pale by comparison. They don't have the number of shinobi, or resources, but they will be the best hidden village in spite of that. Keen and as unbreakable as a wind blade (Well, one of Baki's wind blades, he's not quite as good as Baki in that branch of elemental jitsu).

Tsusho looks up at him through the mass of bandages. He asks how he can repay the village for failing. What can he do to atone?

Get better, the Kazekage replies. If his body fully heals he can go back to serving Suna as the head of the ANBU. If not, he knows a place where Tsusho's ability to work with groups is needed, desperately.

Tsusho's one visible eye betrays confusion, and the Kazekage continues to explain. Tsusho has always preferred poisons to more traditional weapons, and ninjitsu. The puppeteering troupes have fallen out of favor and into chaos, thanks to Sasori, and then Chiyo-sama withdrawing her leadership so suddenly. If Tsusho can get the bunch of temperamental artistic warriors to work together again, the Kazekage is willing to put Tsusho up as a kami to be hidden away in a shrine, and worshiped.

Tsusho chuckles. The Kazekage smiles behind the traditional half face mask. One more shinobi working for the good of Suna. And hopefully he'll make the handful of puppet users that continue stubbornly cling to their weapons co-operate. Suna will rebuild its status.

…

Fury etches obscene words on the insides of his veins. He keeps his face expressionless, merely fixing the daiyamo of the Wind Country with his intense black hole-like eyes. The boy besides his father gulps, but the diayamo remains calm.

Sand brought the attack on itself. If they had patrolled the border the way he had asked Leaf wouldn't have come so deep into Wind. And the shinobi of Konoha weren't entirely kind to the few villages they passed. Children went missing, people who happened to see the wrong amount of strangers didn't see anything else. If Suna had done its job --

The Yondaime sips the honeyed tea that has been brought for the visit, and comments tartly that he's surprised that the Third withstood the arrogance this man displays. He has protected the diayamo's family as both body guard and assassin in his time as a shinobi. He killed young children for the daimyo of Wind. He was a jounin by fourteen thanks to a war that the Wind Country helped instigate in order to get some of the better farming land in the River Country.

The diayamo is only a civilian. Suna has done its job far more times than he ever will realize. Now, if the noble will excuse him, he has a hidden village to run. He rises from the tea service, bows, and keeps his eyes from twitching as the diayamo clears his throat gently.

Will they see him in three months, as is customary for the Kagekaze and diayamo to meet?

Of course. The lord of the country has access to very good tea.

…

Temari is playing with blocks (that is, lifting them, and then setting them down when her arms become too tired), her wide blue-teal eyes never leaving the carved wood, yet her mouth opening to scream any time her gravid mother tries to sneak out to the bathroom. He watches his daughter, amused, questioning idly if his wife thinks that Temari has the ability to sense her mother's chakra.

His wife throws a pillow at him as she flops back down on the couch. Not everything is about being a shinobi, she chides lightly. Next to Temari, the teddy bear falls down, and he reaches down to straighten the stuffed animal back into the guardian of the block tower that he's supposed to be.

Temari swats at his scarred and calloused hand. He quickly backs away, to his wife's amusement. He chucks the pillow back at her, and goes to the kitchen to prepare some tea. For now, nothing revolves around being a shinobi.

…

He vomits again into the trash can the nurse has provided. The nurse is shocked. The head doctor isn't. What did he expect? He used a summoned beast as a source of chakra last year, and overused that source at that. He is lucky that he can still use his chakra channels at all. Trying to summon another beast bigger than a sparrow isn't going to happen for him ever again.

He nods painfully, his head pounding. He gets up, and walks (shuffles) out under the noon sun. Nari appraises him with one eye from a wire stretching between two buildings.

Never again, huh, Eagle? She floats down to land on his shoulder with a heavy thud. He winces. Not to worry, she promises. If he ever really, really needs them he'll find a way. The Sky Lord likes the feasts the Eagle brings him to.

He doesn't say anything, taking a shallow flight of steps heading for the north rock face. This was where Suna truly began. In these cliffs, and the high mesa of the north has been left untouched for thousands of years. It brushes the sky, taller than the Kazekage's spire.

They climb to the top, and stop to look at the world spreading out under the great bowl of the sky. Back on the ground, in the family shrine, the Yondaime will burn incense, and place a carnation on the altar. But here, under the scorching sun, there is no room for symbols. Just what is. He stares out into the desert, remembering.

When the sun sets he goes down again, to prepare for the Star Watching Festival. The festival of light and dark, music and remembrance.

…

She's looking through a list of names when he comes in. Temari is asleep on her swollen lap, clutching at her mother's breast. He comes over to look at what she has occupied herself with while he's been busy. She asks him if he thinks it's going to be a boy or a girl.

He tells her he hasn't thought about it. As long as it is breathing, that's enough for him. He definitely isn't going to allow himself to be dragged into the gender debate. It's worse than the "does this make me look fat?" question.

But apparently there is no right answer when it comes to the gender debate. She continues to harangue him, saying that he should care, for a few minutes, before saying she'd like a boy this time. A nice little boy to balance Temari. He just nods, wondering if there is any way he can escape the discussion.

There isn't. She tells him that she likes the name Ichigo. But maybe she should look at names with more historical significance.

He replies that he won't care what the brat is named. She can call it Kankurou for all of him. As long as it's her child, that's all he cares about.

She narrows her eyes and says, very well, that's what they will call the child Kankurou, whether it's a boy or a girl.

She gets up and heads for the kitchen. He remains contemplating the latest mission reports for a few moments (seven genin, three chunnin, and two jounin have died this year. Depressing, but that's actually an all time safety record. If only he could afford to lose them) before her words catch up with him. His eyes widen and he shoots up from his slouch so quickly that he nearly trips over his long robes. He yells after her that he's not going to risk branding his child as a nancy-boy writer, or a play acting lesbian through name choice.

Her tanuki-like laugh rings through the Kazekage's suite.

…

He leans over the crib. It's been four days since the boy was born, and this is the first time he's seen him. Yes, the poor child was named Kankurou. He winces, and hopes that the children won't make too much fun of the boy when he enters a genin team. And this boy _will_ be part of a genin team, because he is the Kazekage's son, and heir. He will become a shinobi. He will not die like so many other genin.

Tsusho comes up behind his Kazekage, arrayed in a stylish black set of formal, flowing robes that almost completely cover his burn scared body, and what isn't covered is painted. He has already paid his respects to the mother, and now he looks in on the boy. He makes the innocent comment that the boy is exactly as sweet as his mother described, and sensibly quiet. Another shinobi for the Kazekage's small army?

Another shinobi? The Yondaime looks mystified.

Well of course, in the kitchen the year old Temari is playing with kunai, Tsusho responds. He had thought the Yondaime was introducing her to the --

The Kazekage looks like a startled rabbit, and quickly leaves, causing the Head Puppeteer to raise painted eyebrows. Ah, evidently all parents aren't like his father when it comes to pointy objects. He shrugs elegantly, and looks down at Kankurou. You'll be like that, Tsusho tells the child laughingly. After all, the boy is named after men who wielded the sharpest weapons of all.

…

The Kazekage flops down on the futon after the fight. Temari stops sucking on the kunai's grip, and looks up curiously at her father. He looks down at her, mystified as to how she finds the weapons. Sure, she does live in a hidden village, but she's only one year old and a couple of months! He most certainly isn't _giving_ them to her, no matter what his wife says. He doesn't even want Temari to become a shinobi. A kunai target kunochi.

He retrieves the kunai, and then looks hard at his daughter. Father and Kazekage war, while the little child grabs at her teddy, and begins to suck an ear. He didn't even think that Temari would end up as a shinobi. He doesn't want that path for his little girl. He wants her to live a safe life, like her mother. She is something to be protected, not something to go out and die.

On the other hand, if she is capable -- he can't believe he's considering this. The kunai is twirled from its ring, the blade flashing. Temari follows its movement with her large eyes, and doesn't look in the least bit surprised when he releases the metal shard and it buries itself in a wall. He sighs. Suna needs each shinobi. The Kagekaze wins, and he knows that as soon as Temari can speak and walk he will be handing his little girl over to a tutor in the shinobi arts.

…

He lies very still, hoping that the blood will stop dripping down the sides of his vision. But nothing is ever that kind in real life. If only it could be that kind in illusion. He knows he'll be picked up by whoever finds his body. He'll be sent back to the hospital, and told that he is working too much, and allowing the venom that almost stole his sight to come back and finish the job.

He sighs, and tries to push himself off the carpet. Any moment now. The door bursts open right on cue, and Yashamaru runs in. He manages to get into a sitting position before his brother-in-law can touch him. He inquires about the reason why Yashamaru is so excited. This gets him one of Yashamaru's few "honest" looks of exasperation.

Why, last time Yashamaru checked, it wasn't normal to hear the thump of falling bodies from the Kazekage's office. When did the Yondaime last sleep?

The Kazekage just stands, weaving back and forth like the stubborn idiot he is. He can never be wrong. Never go back on his duty and the promises he makes to the village. Yashamaru can pick up the casualty reports, bingo books, and list of missions to be completed from where he dropped them, if Yashamaru is desperate to be useful.

Yashamaru does, plunking them down angrily on the desk. The Kazekage raises an eyebrow. It's not like his brother to be anything other than cheerful.

Yashamaru looks at him (at least the Yondaime thinks he does, the sunflower petals raining around them are rather distracting). The Yondaime called him brother.

Well, yes, he is by marriage, the Kazekage is nonplused.

Yashamaru just smiles one of his simple, deceiving smiles. He did it. He broke through to the layer in his Kazekage that is reserved for the Kazekage's wife. He's glad.

Why? The Yondaime doesn't understand.

Yashamaru looks away, and then sighs. If it weren't for his sister, protecting him, helping him up, he would have died long ago, back in Rice. He's never been what he'd call a normal person. His sister's opinions, thoughts and feelings matter to him more than his own. Indeed, he often doesn't feel anything for the things that give her such liveliness and spontaneity. So, he adopts his sister's feelings for his own. She means the world to him, and so does anyone she cares about. But the man she loves so much has a barrier around him that Yashamaru couldn't climb.

The Kazekage looks at Yashamaru, suddenly comprehending an underneath that Yashamaru doesn't know is there. They are the same person in an odd way. Certainly, there are differences. He's a direct, powerful fighter, Yashamaru is sneaky and clever. He focuses in on life like a laser beam, Yashamaru is general, vague, and uncommitted to everything. He is his own master, self possessed, and emotionally stable, Yashamaru is like a blank doll, living only for the whims of others.

But they are both isolated inside. They both do not care for themselves, and so must attach their emotions to others, like strings. They love the liveliness and vivacity, the sheer life that she brings to them as if it was nothing.

"You will always be my brother," he really means this promise.

Yashamaru breaks into one of his calm smiles. He looks down at the sheets of paper he picked up, embarrassed, but the pleased expression drains away as his eyes scan over the page. He picks it up, and reads one underneath it. He looks up at the Kazekage, who just nods. At the current death rate among genin, Suna isn't going to have a new generation. Better still, the daimyo, shrewd, cowardly man, is still giving missions to the Leaf Village. They need something to give them the edge again.

"Shall I help?"

"Not going to drag me off to the hospital?"

"This is more important. It's not as though Suna has a surfeit of people who can take up trades to keep the village from collapsing."

…

It's called skating destruction. It's a balancing act between Kazekage and man. He wonders, as he listens to his wife breathing peacefully (and it's still gorgeous), how he will know when he has failed. He doesn't get to see his wife until they are both too tired to do anything but argue half-heartedly. Is that a sign that the Kazekage has taken over? He didn't see Temari's first steps. He doesn't know Kankurou's face. Are these the signs?

Or is it the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach? It's been with him all his life. As far back as he can remember. But now he finds himself retreating to it. It's easier to watch Suna crumble from the cold vantage point.

In the dark he hugs her blindly to him, a sudden desperate urge. Don't let him forget happiness, he pleads, a bare whisper. Don't let him forget that Suna will be prosperous again. Don't let him forget that he can put down the burden when the village doesn't need ruthlessness any more.

In the morning he forgets the fear. Weapons are not afraid.

…

Doors are slammed, and suddenly the suite echoes with silence. The Kazekage stands in the living room, looking blankly out the dark window. She just stalked off with the toddling Temari, and Kankurou strapped to her back. He doesn't know where she's going, but suspects this was part of the argument. In the kitchen the small tray with snacks is empty, a sign that they were going to a friend's house tonight.

Only he has been too busy organizing a mission into the Earth country with one of his Jounin. And at two in the morning he had come back to his apartment to be yelled at. Funny. He should be feeling guilty, shouldn't he?

He removes the robes of the Kazekage, sets his alarm for six, and flops down on the futon to sleep the sleep of the weary.

…

Yashamaru studies the unreadable face of the Kazekage. The Yondaime has promised to watch the children for the day so that his wife can go see some friends. Yashamaru suspects it is an apology for something, yet the Yondaime doesn't seem to be repentant or sorry for anything. His brother has always had the complete lack of expression that is normally associated with still water, in any case, but Yashamaru, the great dissimulator, can't pierce the veil to see anything beyond normal fears and worries.

Baki stands against a wall, a tightly coiled trap, drinking sake, and oblivious to the blond girl playing by his feet. Over by the window, Tsusho animates a small doll for Kankurou to play with. Of the four men in the apartment, he is the only one bothering to make baby noises and interact with the children. Yashamaru watches, storing away the information on how to act for later.

Finally, the Kazekage sighs, coming back from whatever internal journey he has been on. "The numbers are getting worse and worse, you know."

They do. But not one in the three of the Kazekage's most trusted councilors knows what to do. Yashamaru, however, senses that under the blank mask of expression his Yondaime has a plan, shaky and uncertain.

…

They've been fighting over the stupidest of things, recently. Fighting, and making up, only to fight again. He doesn't understand why his overtures have been met by angry retorts on her part.

She only looks back with pain on the jounin who lay in the hospital bed, and asked if she was impressed with his scars. Or clumsily folded origami paper with bandaged hands. Or told her stories about disappearing islands in the sand. Or just talked to her. She misses him, and will forgive him the instant he apologizes.

He never does.

…

When she's finally had enough, she simply walks into his office. She dismisses his aides. She tells him to get out from behind that chair, and follow her. He obeys, more out of surprise than anything. They go outside, and he follows her steps North to the mesa.

The streets are yellow, and sun warmed. He looks around as he always does, checking his Suna. It is so small. There is no bustle on the streets. Unusual for a late summer afternoon, and a sign of the sickness eating away at Sand.

She takes the switchback path to the highest tier of the village. He hears her labored breathing on the wind as they toil higher. When she stumbles he reaches out for her hand. Their fingers lock in the familiar embrace, and suddenly the silence is transformed from empty waste to the old silence blooming with possibilities.

They reach the plateau, and she goes to sit on the edge farthest from Suna, twisting to face the west and the setting sun. He places the hat of the Kazekage on the flat rock, and sits next to her. Together they watch the sun sink below the horizon.

They talk, slowly. About the last time they were alone like this. About the Third. About the Battle in Suna. About Temari. About Kankurou. About the future. About the past. About what is important. About what is mundane. They talk. There are no secrets.

At last, she asks why he is avoiding her. He watches the brilliant, fiery red-lit sky. He doesn't know how to talk to her any more. For now he is the Kazekage. He can't put that aside just for her, or Suna might fall. Can she name one person who would do better in his place?

No, she replies reluctantly. But she wants to be more than someone who lives in his home, and takes care of his children. Not that they really are his children.

He objects, startled.

Her teal eyes turn on him coldly. What color are Kankurou's eyes? She retorts. All right, he knows Temari exists, but what of his son?!

Blue? He suggests uncertainly, seeing the point to her accusation.

She chuckles, and shakes her head sadly. They aren't the same people anymore, are they?

His hand seeks her blond hair as the sky turns yellow green in the twilight before the sun's light is finally extinguished. He runs his fingers through the soft straw, and says that he still loves her. She accepts this, and doesn't ask how much. It would ruin it for both of them.

She leans against him, her head turned to look up at the stars. Will he tell her a story about them, like old times?

Which one, his fingers slip from her hair to brush her cheek.

She points like the girl she was, and declares that she wants a story about the star over there. Behind her back she feels a tremor go through him. His arms wrap around her and his head drops to her shoulder. The star light isn't needed for her to know that he's shaking like he's suppressing fear.

He can't see them, he whispers to her. A breeze blows from the west, tugging at her hair and his robes. His eyes -- she puts her fingers up to stroke his cheek. It stops the shaking for a moment.

He tells the story of a young boy who walked through the sand and visited other worlds while everyone was sleeping. She smiles, and tells him that she likes that story. Can he tell it to Temari and Kankurou when they're older? He promises he will, sealing it with a kiss. The wind picks up, and he says they have to leave. A storm is blowing in.

She leads him back down to the spire. Once they get to the apartment, he orders the shinobi standing sentinel to make certain that no one comes to take him away during the night. She feeds Kankurou, and tucks Temari in. He watches her from the doorway of their room, and then asks for a kiss goodnight.

Tell her a story, she challenges, walking past him, smiling her flirtatious smile. He follows, and tells her (while helping her out of her clothes, and brushing her hair) of a boy trying to change the world, despite the blood and violence that permeated the air and ruined his friendships.

He will get his friend backs in the end, won't he? She asks hopefully, gasping as his hands slide down her sides. He kisses her throat, and tells her: Of course. It was a story for her, after all. She doesn't want to hear the reality: Of course not. Once someone leaves, they don't come back.

When they make love he feels like he's drowning. He's missed holding her so much. Missed listening to her throaty moans, and screams. It feels like she's bringing him back to life as they bring their bodies together. Like the coldness lifts when she is so close.

That night he dreams of kunochi ripped apart, and dangling on barbed wire. Suffocating like him, with blood leaking from their mouths.

…

Morning sickness has hit her harder than usual, and she simply drops Kankurou and Temari off in the office before locking the apartment door, and spending the next three hours in the bathroom.

He sighs, and gets on with the business of reassigning teammates, while on the floor Temari plays with the blunted shuriken he absentmindedly gave her to keep quiet. Kankurou sleeps in a basket by the large bookshelf containing summoning contracts. Just a normal kage's family. Babies playing with the normal tools of death.

…

"What?"

"You heard me, Yondaime," the Wind Country Daimyo replies evenly. "I'm afraid that for any future military engagements I shall be calling on the village of Konoha."

He nearly jumps up, and is already forming the rat seal before his better sense can control and focus his fury. "May I ask why? Every mission we have received from the Wind Country in the last year has been carried out successfully for you."

"Konoha's shinobi are better, and there are more of them," the daimyo shrugs. "Hyuuga, Uchiha, The Copy Ninja, Namikaze Minato, Konoha's Green Beast, Genjutsu Specialist Yuhi Kurenai, Sarutobi; these names make men tremble, and they are all contained within Konoha's walls. The names in Suna have narrowed down to a very short list. Chiyo the Poisoner is no longer active. Sasori of the Red Sands has descended to the depth of missing nin. The Third Kazekage is no more. You, Suna's Wind Rider, are the last of the great names the war created. Your students are good, and Suna's few shinobi are honed like knives. But I need many well tempered blades. Not a handful. Until you can make one shinobi that does the work of forty we cannot do business."

"I see."

"Don't take this personally, Yondaime Kazekage. I have a great deal of respect for you. You are the kind of man who knows how to use his subordinates to the best advantage. You are holding Suna from the brink of ruin that your Sandaime, in his arrogance of his own skill, created.

"Do not give me that murderous gaze," the daimyo continues with the cool effiency of one ordering a _servant_. "The Third Kazekage of Sand let many opportunities to destroy the other Hidden Villages slip through his fingers because he did not understand that one must kill the pups before they grow into wolves."

For a moment the face of a snarling child flashes through the Kazekage's mind, and he wonders where Fang Girl (and Pillow Boy, who thinks like a real ninja, and Shusui-kun who thinks about his teammates before thinking like a ninja) is now. Would he have changed the world if he stopped to slaughter all the genin he had run into over the years? Well, he certainly would have changed it for the genin.

What had that medic said? Shinobi can only be understood by other shinobi?

"Thank you. I assume, then, that you have already sent the new military contract to Konoha. I shall be leaving now. You may be assured that Suna's long term contract with the Wind Country shall be considered voided on our end," he bows, barely an inclination of his head to the _civilian_, and leaves in a swirl of blue and white.


	4. Sand

Author's Note: So, some of you might have noticed that the formatting for the stories is rather odd. I'm used to doing most of my formatting in HTML manually which I do instead of italicizing. It turns out FF.N's automatically can transfer all that formatting from Open Office and Word. So, I've now corrected all of the previous format errors that I could find. Yay for new and shinier italics. Which is really important in this section, as the final chapters deal with heavy italics.

Anyway, after reading the reviews for the last chapter it occurs to me that I may not have made this clear: The story is actually finished. I update once a week on the weekends, depending on my time, and homework load. Why do I do that when I could put it up all at once? Well, it's mainly for a selfish reason. I spent about a year and a half on this story. It is my most experimental, and only finished long term piece. I'm really proud of this puppy. So, I posted it on another site, thinking that I might get some happy accolades which would make the time I spent on it pay off. I got three reviews for posting 45 chapters (I was posting drabble by drabble on there. Here you're getting a full section of drabbles at a time). It was rather depressing. So I came to FF.N, hoping that I would get some more reviews. By posting weekly it means that more people will see it, as it moves to the front of the updated pack, rather than getting lost within the welter of the _Naruto_ archives.

Anyway, in response to **justsomegirl** (I'm sorry I couldn't respond earlier, but if you have no FF.N account, the site won't let me leave a response to your review): Thanks so very much. Reviews are always appreciated, whether I get one or forty five (I try to respond to everyone). I'm sorry to say that Yashamaru is easily this story's weakest point. Unlike the other characters, the Kazekage doesn't see a lot of what is going on in Yashamaru's head because the darling brother really doesn't want him to know. I have a full painting of his character in my own mind, but seeing as this story is told completely from the Kazekage's narrow perspective, I could not fit the other stories about Yasha-pants in. I just hope that I manage to pull off the conflict so that it doesn't come completely out of the blue: "Whoops, have to have the darling uncle try to kill Gaara now." On to Yashamaru's sister: The marital conflict was an important point for me to include. Gaara's mother fell into the "token true love" stereotype almost at once, and she has very little agency. Part of that is, of course, Kazekage vision, which is very patriarchal and patrician. However, I really wanted to give her character something more. She won't get the kind of well-roundedness that Temari ends up with (breaking the mold of the token kick-ass female considering her political insight, coupled with clumsy brashness, and arrogance that we see as the chuunin story arc progresses). However, she will not just be the "perfect, loving wife," at least, I hope that's what I've achieved. Now that I've made these grandiose sweeping statements, I will have to point something out: She curses the village as she dies, not her husband, which kinda falls back into the "perfect, loving wife" stereotype. However, this story probably wouldn't have existed if that point hadn't struck me. She was still in love/didn't blame her husband when she died, and I really wanted to tell the story of why that was. Anyway, as to you're final compliment: I wish I could take total credit for the scene you mentioned, but stylistically, I was paying homage to Novocaine (Read her "Baik" one of the coolest sketches of Orochimaru's character I've ever read). Part of it is because her sex scenes are pretty amazing, and part of it is because I had never written a full sex scene before. I did imply one in "A Horrible Thing to Do" (On Ficwad under my IWCT penname), but I'd never had been explicit until writing the scenes for Break Down. ~ MF

Finally, thanks to **Citadel**, there is now a theme song for this fanfic: "Heavy" by Collective Soul. Youtube the version they did in Morocco if you can. The setting for the video is beautiful, although it sounds a bit softer than the regular song. I prefer the non-acoustic version of the music, paired with the video for the acoustic version. Go figure.

...

It's been a bad day. A sandstorm rages around Suna's walls. He came back from the daimyo yesterday. He looks out the window with his dim vision. _Until you can make one shinobi that does the work of forty we cannot do business._

Now is the time. He exits the building, his hands easily forming the seals he needs, and his chakra redirecting the wind around him. Only a fool would try to stop a sandstorm. Chakra can only bend the laws of nature so much, but a true wind master can move the wind along paths that it _might_ have gone down anyway, and thus save himself from being flayed alive. His guards fall in behind him, apprehensive. The Kazekage rarely throws around chakra like this. It doesn't matter. It's time. He's going to visit Chiyo-sama.

…

One favor. That's all he gets. He yells the promise at her through the door that is slammed in his face as soon as the word "jinchuuryki" is mentioned. The door slides open again, slowly.

He may come in, he is told, but his lackeys may enjoy the hospitality of the door step. Chiyo-sama, whose habitual switching of light-hearted humor and deep bitterness has gotten more unpredictable since Sasori fled Sand in a sickeningly twisted body that used to belong to Hiruko, is deadly serious now.

He comes in, and her older brother looks up from a table set for tea. At a gesture from Chiyo, the elderly man is sent packing with the tea service. If the question whether years from now Temari might act so presumptuously with Kankurou flashes through his mind, it does so in his hind brain. His children don't matter right now. This is about Suna. And saving Suna from total ruin.

This is what he wants his favor to be? Chiyo-sama asks, glaring up at him. But with his unfocus-able holes of eyes he will win any glaring contest. Does he really know what he's asking for?

A weapon, he replies. That's all she ever offered him. Heal another shinobi for him to use, or use herself as a weapon. Those were her original extremes. He has decided that he wants her to _make_ a weapon.

What possible mission could he need _this_ weapon for? she scoffs. The byuuki are a weapon for those without hope. People who will die anyway.

Suna is without hope, he replies quietly. Unless they start training their ninja to do the work of forty they will get no more than D-Rank missions. Ninja will drift away. Trade will dry up. And Suna will be another hole in the ground to be riddled by Shukaku's Breath.

She doesn't believe it.

The courier bearing the standard military contract offer is already on his way to Konoha from the daimyo of Wind, he replies, knowing what the news will do to the old woman, but he needs this edge. Suna doesn't have the legends of the great geniuses any more. And since the daimyo foresees peace with the Fire Country, he can look outside his borders.

Chiyo-sama's face works in abject rage, and she lifts the table to smash it into the wall. She screams, attacks him (but he was expecting this, and has had years of practice dodging the matriarch's attacks), and rants so loudly that he sees birds flying away from the window. Useless boy, why hasn't he grown a spine and ordered the courier killed?! She winds down by poking him in the chest.

Because he could do that. And kill the next courier sent. And the next. And destroy the villages of the Wind Country. And lay siege to the daimyo. And then become the ruler of the entire Wind Country through fear. But he was brought up to believe that there was something dirty about killing civilians. He will do it if it's the only option, but it isn't. If they made a working jinchuuryki it would be possible to not only complete missions with few casualties, but to crush Konoha, and its bunch of geniuses. Once they do that, well, he is a good ninja, who sees the merit in having the rulers come to him on their knees, rather than going to them, and forcing them to bow.

Chiyo-sama digests this piece of information.

He's willing to doom a child? she inquires at last, sounding tired. The first host of Shukaku psychologically rejected the demon, making him into a mental cripple that nearly ripped himself apart physically each time he tried to manifest. Useless. At twenty-one the boy was too old, too set in his ways to properly bond with the foreign chakra. And the same thing happened to the second jinchuuryki, at thirteen, unable to both bond, and emerge as the controller of the bond. Only a child so young that they have not been weaned from their mother's milk could possibly, possibly, contain Shukaku and stay sane. Possibly.

Then it will be an experiment to test that theory, he replies evenly.

Shukaku is the beginning and the end of a jinchuuryki, Chiyo-sama points out. They have to extract the demon (an easy enough task as long as Sand has Shukaku's teapot) in order to make certain that Shukaku survives. If the child dies, Shukaku, and whatever twisted hope they have in it, dies too. So, once the purpose has been served, they must extract the demon, and that always has a fatal result for the jinchuuryki.

Weapons break, is his response.

And there is the question of the sacrifice. Shukaku's sealing demands that a heart stop beating, Chiyo comments. It needs to be a very special heart. Connected to the container somehow.

It's for Suna, he says.

Chiyo gives him a long look. She has lived her entire life for Suna. They will talk more later, she says, and shows him out.

…

He contemplates the choice of vessel as he works on his other papers. A conclusion is bubbling in the back of his mind, sandy and ugly. If he is going to ruin a child's life, he, as Kazekage, must choose his own children. He can't sacrifice someone else's child. And Kankurou is the _only_ child of the right age in Sand at the moment (depressing as this fact is). He thinks that he should be glad it isn't Temari, and then thinks he should be ashamed of that thought. He feels neither emotion. In the face of annihilation of Suna (all that he really cares about), his children are insignificant.

A knock on his office door is heard, and he tells the civilian (he can tell from here that the person hasn't worked their chakra coils) to enter. His wife does, bringing him his lunch. His smile freezes for a moment, as he stares at her semi-bloated abdomen. Even Kankurou might be too old. He might have to choose another candidate.

…

It's a sunny afternoon, and the Kazekage has a meeting in the market with a merchant. He meets up with his wife by accident, and she is strolling with Kankurou and Temari. They stop at a vendor selling strips of grilled goat meat. He buys enough for everyone (except for Kankurou, who still eats soft rice balls and cut peaches from a dish pre-packed by his mother).

The children play at their feet, Temari kicking sand in Kankurou's face, and the two-year old shrieking angrily. They run from the parents, or Temari runs, Kankurou stumbling doggedly after her on pudgy legs. His wife looks concerned. He doesn't understand why. A loud wail rips the air, and she runs for Kankurou, who has tripped, and is sprawling on the ground, screaming like a child.

He watches with a blank face, as his wife picks Kankurou up, wiping away the tears. Temari watches from an equal distance, at first looking scared and concerned, and then teal eyes skate over to her father, and she copies his crossed arm pose, and the blank, uncomprehending, unsympathetic expression perfectly.

…

Why couldn't Kankurou have picked himself up? the Yondaime asks that night. Isn't she just spoiling him?

The look she gives him is very old, and suggests he needs to go back to his childhood and rethink his life. Kankurou is only two. Yes, he can pick himself up, but he needs to know his mother is there for him.

Why? the Kazekage is frustrated by the conundrum. On missions to protect merchants he won't have his mother to pick him up.

He isn't on a mission to protect merchants! his wife snaps. Kankurou is only two, and _not_ a genin. She knows her husband was made genin freakishly young because of the war, but there is no more war, and even his mother must have held him.

His recollections of his mother are hazy, and he replies that he doesn't remember her ever holding him. She would -- he stretches his memory to the time before his second chuunin mission, the one where he discovered the ambush that had killed his mother and her genin protégés, so dim and far away from now -- sing.

See, his mother sang to him to comfort him, his wife retorts smugly.

No, no. She would sing, he corrects. Not to him. Not to anyone. She would just sing. That's all he really remembers of his mother. And that her hair was brown. She sang herself away into her own world, dancing on Shukaku's stars, when she wasn't dealing with village business.

His wife rolls her teal eyes, and purses her lips, before groaning and putting her hand over her belly. Is his child trying to kill her? she asks jokingly. She's sick of her insides being used as taijutsu practice.

Three more months, he replies, trying not to think about it. And why are the children only his when they're doing something wrong?

…

_She SCREAMS in pain._

She won't do it, she tells him adamantly. Does he even know what he's suggesting? Is he listening to himself? He just told her he was planning on turning their newest child into a demon. Is he crazy?!

She doesn't have a choice in the matter, he tells her evenly. Her feelings of personal revulsion don't matter to him more than the lives he looses every week on missions. A jinchuuryki is just one of many things that will help keep the death rate down, and they've run out of options.

_She's so warm, hot. There must be a fire consuming her from within as she thrashes within the seal, trying desperately to break free._

He and Yashamaru escort her, forcefully, bodily towards the cave when the contractions begin, ignoring the harsh sting of the winter rain that pounds Suna, screaming with her. Both are grim. Both know what is going to happen, but both secretly hope that reality will bend, just for her. Of course, Yashamaru thinks, it has to. She can't leave anything unfinished, and she is going to have a lot to yell at them about after this.

_She can feel the demon of the desert filling her, laughing crazily, ripping her body up from the inside as her child is born._

She stares at her husband, and for the first time sees the distant, focused Wind Rider that rips men apart with the air they breathe. His grip, always so gentle with her before, is unbreakable, despite her struggle as Chiyo calmly paints the designs on her body.

Her head swings to Yashamaru, pleading for someone to listen to her. He can't meet her eyes the way her husband can. He just stands like a stone, looking past her at his Kazekage. Tears fly down her cheeks as she realizes that his love of her has been swallowed by his love for her husband.

_The death god is silent, observing everything, and she can see it, waiting. Shukaku's high, drunken laugh echoes in her head. She attempts to scrabble away as memories of blood and murder pour into her._

The teapot becomes visible, covered in blue markings and black seals. The ground around both her and the teapot has been prepared with painted spirals and flames that she doesn't know the meaning of. But that doesn't matter, since the pot, that damned piece of crockery, begins to laugh at the woman struggling both with her husband, holding her there, and her son, who so desperately wants to come into the world right now.

The pain is unimaginable. Worse than with Temari, and Kankurou combined. This will kill her. Is this what her husband wants? No. He is like a child himself, who doesn't understand the consequences of what he is doing. He's just doing it for Suna. And her pain screws itself up into anger. Anger at the village. Anger at the war. Anger at the entire fucked up shinobi world for doing this to her family.

Where is the jounin who looked at her with topaz clear eyes that warmed for the few instants of seeing her? Where is he, why isn't he laughing in a hospital bed, his right arm covered in bandages? Why isn't he stroking her hair, telling her horrible fairy stories of devils and murder?

Is this what Suna needs? To take a kind person, and turn them into a focused weapon? This is what the Hidden Village needs, a Kazekage willing to force this pain on the person he said he would love ever after. The Hidden Village hasn't done anything to deserve his loyalty. His love. It should have been hers!

_She screams, Shukaku echoing behind her words, because until her little Gaara fully leaves her body she too is a jinchuuryki. She shrieks: her child will be her revenge. This demon will DESTROY the village as the village has destroyed her._

Sand fountains, blood pools, and the child screams, his father's crystal blue eyes already open, and requiring no thin lines of kohl. Under the Kazekage's grip, his wife's body goes slack, and he find himself looking at her face, relaxed, almost peaceful after all that struggle.

_Why is he shaking?_

…

It seems unfair that the rains ended yesterday, and today, as they stand under the blue sky, the flowers are blooming across the desert.

_She's dead._

He had known this would happen, but had he really held her down as Shukaku entered her, even while the vessel was coming out of her? Had it really been him? No. It couldn't have. He would be feeling guilt if it had been. He would be feeling _something._

_She is dead._

The funeral is long, as befits the wife of the Kazekage. It's the last thing he can give her. Really, the only thing he ever has given her, he thinks. The proper funeral that he is paying no attention too. No tears.

_She has died._

Temari is standing next to him in a little black robe, holding her teddy bear. She has no idea what's going on. She just stands there, her thick blond hair lying straight, and carefully brushed by Yashamaru. Kankurou sits on the ground (sandy ground), playing with a straw doll Tsusho passed over to keep the two-year old quiet.

_She died._

At home Yashamaru, too broken to come observe the mourning, watches a baby that morphs and wriggles unpleasantly as it sleeps. Shukaku is still taking over, although even byuuki can't do much in an infant's body. The child will be a nightmare by the time it is Temari's age, but the body just doesn't have the motor control for Shukaku to use it right now.

_She had died._

There are no tears. His mind is circling high in the sky, imagining the carpet of spring flowers. It really is unfair that the sky won't mourn for him. If it can rain he will know that some part of him feels something about all of this. It doesn't rain. Flowers for the birth of a son blossom beautifully all around Suna.


	5. Beast

Author's Note: I'm afraid the Chapters get shorter from here, but still, we have the vauge gist of the story. Bad life choices are not smart. Anyway, enjoy.

…

Life has taken on the unreality of a watercolor painting. He wakes up, goes to work, listens to the concerns of the villagers, sends men out on missions, assigns genin teams, goes back to sleep. Occasionally he remembers eating. He knows why, intellectually, he can't grasp reality right now. He hasn't been able to accept what he did. He knows, once he can do that, his world can break, and then he can pick up the shattered remains, just like always, and move on.

Baki is late reporting in, and when finally the Kazekage goes to the door of his office to ask the orderly in the driest of tones why Baki is not here yet, he sees his jounin talking quietly with Tsusho, and then break away from the Head Puppeteer with a curt nod. What happened to the youthful arrogance? Has Baki always been like this? He struggles to remember.

The report is concise, and Baki requests a meeting the next day. He has a new mission to propose. The Kazekage nods, and once the last report of the day is cleared from his schedule, he goes back to his apartment.

Temari, almost four, knows enough to pick up the teddy bear, and move out of the living room as he flops down on a cushion. Yashamaru comes in to see him holding his face in both hands, cold eyes visible through the net of fingers. Not one of his Kazekage's good moods, then. Good thing he left the youngest in his crib, watching sand rotate lazily.

Yashamaru watches silently, as the man who taught him, his sensei, spirals inwards, focusing deeply inside on whatever passes for Sensei's soul. Yashamaru's hand unconsciously grips the thread wrapping the handle of the kunai at his hip. The Yondaime is completely unprotected. Yashamaru always used the winds to guide his weapons because his aim was horrible, but he could hit the hunched target from this five foot distance.

The kunai doesn't make a noise as he draws it from the hip sheath. He balances it carefully, thoughts sleeting through his mind that are both his own, and not his own. He can. She can't. He _hates_. She _loves_.

_Whose fault is it really?_

The kunai lowers shakily.

He is knocked to the floor by a sweeping kick, and the Kazekage is just as suddenly on top of him, pinning both his wrists above his head with one scarred hand. Yashamaru remembers another failure in the same position.

"Do you hate me?" his sensei leans over him, the wind master's eyes blank.

Terror makes Yashamaru's body quake. His brother is going to kill him. "She didn't."

"I killed her."

"She loved you."

"Do you?"

"Ye--," this is not what the Kazekage wants to hear. His free hand is holding Yashamaru's kunai, it presses the steel into his throat.

"Do you, Yashamaru, the great dissembler, feel any emotion that is not linked to her opinions?"

"I -- not yet," Yashamaru's stone-like eyes can't meet the black pupils.

The Kazekage releases his grip on his brother's wrists, and sits up again, kunai nowhere in sight. He looks around the living room, apparently not quite ready to get off Yashamaru's knees. There is something vague and confused in his expression. "Temari will be four soon. And then Kankurou has his third birthday after, right?" he murmurs, as if he's trying to remember something. "Where _is_ Kankurou? I haven't seen him recently."

Yashamaru looks at the Yondaime, and realizes that his mentor is being completely serious. He has no idea where his son is. "Tsusho came by one day four months ago -- just a few weeks after the funeral, and said he was taking Kankurou. You said he could use the training, remember?"

"Oh. I must have. I wonder --," the Kazekage rises from Yashamaru's knees at last, and walks into the kitchen to see if there is anything to eat.

The next day Tsusho and Baki turn up for the meeting Baki arranged. The Kazekage isn't surprised to see the conspiracy of two. He isn't surprised by the proposal that Temari is ready for mentoring, and Baki, who has shown no interest in children, and in fact, down right despises them, has volunteered to be her mentor before she is approved to be a genin. Tsusho stands behind Baki, an anxious supporter, a clever puppeteer.

The Kazekage signs off on the proposal without comment. As Tsusho leaves, however, he inquires of the air when will Tsusho find someone to manipulate into taking the last child off his hands? Tsusho looks guilty under his make-up, but shrugs, and says the truth is that the Kazekage was not capable of taking care of children when his wife was alive, and Tsusho will manipulate things as he pleases so Suna can have three strong shinobi.

Kankurou is getting the care he needs with the great family of the Troupe, and Temari was going to be foisted off for training as soon as she turned four, anyway. Tsusho only let her stay with the Yondaime for so long after the funeral because her father did occasionally show an interest in her, but the former ANBU captain has observed enough to know how the Kazekage can only wince away from her large teal eyes, now. Don't worry, Tsusho will make certain that Baki has her visit her father regularly.

He is so glad that his subordinates are taking care of things for him, he tells Tsusho scathingly.

He is the Kazekage, and he looks after the village well enough, Tsusho replies. Some might say better than the Third, but Tsusho will wait to see how Gaara turns out before he places any bets.

He leaves. The Yondaime scowls, but in the end, just lets the conversation fade into the watercolor of life.

…

He has to read the note a few times before getting the sense of it. Leaf was attacked by a monstrous chakra beast which was destroyed at the cost of the Yondaime Hokage's life. The Sandaime Hokage sends his regards to the Kazekage, and requests a meeting.

Basically, the note says that Leaf had weathered a horrible storm, and now their allies through conquest had better not even think about striking, understand? Now is not a good time to mess with Leaf. Suna can't at the moment, anyway. Not enough people to destroy a crippled village. How pathetic.

He agrees to the meeting, and drops back into routine. Late at night a week later he wonders if the monster was really destroyed, or ended up like Shukaku. Hmm. No. One man without training cannot create a jinchuuryki. However, when the meeting happens he will be careful to keep the subjects off demonic vessels.

...

On the first visit, he and Temari drink a stilted tea, and Temari tells him that she doesn't like kunai, because they aren't big enough to block with properly. He replies that there's a reason why kunai are forged with rings on their handles, she just has to get used to rotating the blade. He asks her if her training is challenging enough. She shrugs, her four-year old face serious. She guesses, yeah. They finish the stilted tea, and she leaves.

_He meant to ask her about the teddy bear._

On the second visit Temari brings some desert flowers, and it feels like a knife to the gut to realize that his youngest son is/has already/will be turning one. She has been dead for a year. Baki is with them this time, and Yashamaru comes in for the lunch, looking sick, and slightly sand burned (Shukaku can already make life difficult for anyone within the same room as the vessel). The Yondaime barely acknowledges his guest with a nod, and he doesn't speak for the whole meal.

_He meant to ask her about whether she missed her mother._

On the third visit he comes into the apartment, and finds Temari looking curiously at a little red-headed ghost with black-rimmed eyes that is sitting in a corner opposite from the two of them. Sand coils around his small body, moving the wooden blocks that Temari used to play with. Temari has her teddy bear with her. She asks if the blocks are hers.

He crosses his arms and nods, wanting to see what will happen. Temari stalks right up to the ghost the way she used to stalk right up to Kankurou. Her face twists angrily, and she reaches out.

Her hand slams off a wall of sand. She pulls back, confusion in her eyes, and then tries to snatch the blocks again. The sand wall leaps up a second time, the infant's eyes wide and uncertain. The Yondaime doesn't ever remember hearing the boy cry, but he looks close to it.

Temari looks scared, and says that he can keep the stupid old things. She doesn't want them. She hugs her teddy bear, and backs off. The sand shifts closer to ground level, but continues to swirl around the vessel in a warning way.

They go out to dinner, which is as formal as the tea of the first visit. Temari reports on her studies, and he listens like the Kazekage he is. Nervously, as the bill comes, Temari asks who the other child was. Her youngest brother, he replies, and they leave.

_He meant to ask her whether she's seen Kankurou recently._

Her fourth visit lasts a week, as Baki is away on a mission to give himself a vacation from mentoring. Temari is quiet when he is near by, and he often doesn't notice her, which is good, because he can't afford to be distracted by children.

Yashamaru comes into his office one day with a scratched and bleeding Temari. Both look the worse for wear, and Temari's expression is valiantly trying to hide her terror. Apparently she looked in on the jinchuuryki while he was asleep. The Kazekage sighs, and explains that there is a demon inside the little boy who stole her blocks, and it goes out of control at unexpected intervals. Temari nods.

Later he catches her in the boy's room again. He hauls her away and spanks her. Does she want to be eaten? he hisses. That's what will happen if she continues provoking Shukaku.

She clutches her teddy bear, lip trembling, fighting back tears. Shinobi don't cry. He is relieved when Baki comes to take her away again.

_He meant to ask her if she had made any friends her own age. There are a few children a little older than her still alive._

On her sixth visit, her fifth birthday is approaching. He asks the question he carefully prepared for the occasion: What would she like? She thinks, and he is prepared for the sting of some innocent comment, like: "For Mommy to come back," or "A normal family."

She says she wants a weapon that's bigger than a kunai.

He feels strange. It takes a few hours after she leaves for him to realize that he actually _felt_ something. Properly, rather than reflecting on the emotion that he was supposed to be feeling. What had he felt, though? It had been so brief. Had it been pride or regret?

_He asked her exactly what he meant to this time._

On the seventh visit, apparently she has been in the apartment for hours before he notices that she is there. He only notices because he happened to spot the now two year old demon vessel in the room she normally uses, staring at the teddy bear.

He simply conceals himself in a shadow to see what happens, and right on cue Temari appears, bearing candied fruit. Obviously Yashamaru is cooking right now. She stops, seeing the stranger in her room. Her eyes trace the sand, and then the boy, before going back to the sand. Her father can hear her whisper "a shinobi is afraid of nothing" to herself before she tries to edge through the door without touching the coiling mass.

Its large ice-colored eyes move to stare at her. She gets past the sand, her teal eyes riveted to his, even as she sits down on the floor near the bear. The sand inches towards the plate, and she draws back. The smaller face twists in frustration, but he decides to grab for the food anyway, and the sand willingly brings it to him.

Things are silent and tense. Then: "I'm Temari."

The head bowed over her plate of fruit shoots up in surprise. A tentative, quiet: "Gaara," responds.

"That's my food. Uncle Yashamaru gave it to _me_."

"Mine," is it the Kazekage's imagination, or is there more than one voice claiming the plate?

"Fine," Temari crosses her arms, and pouts. She reaches out for her bear and hugs it to her.

Gaara ignores the fruit, gazing at her with a frustrated lack of understanding. He wants something that she has, and in response the sand reaches out for her, but he draws back, instead. He doesn't know how to take what he desires, only two years old, and barely able to toddle and talk, much less formulate coherent thoughts to explain the large emotions he's feeling.

"This is my Bear," Temari says angrily, eying the sand. "You can't have him."

"Dun want!" Gaara practically snarls.

"That's 'cause you're stoo-pid. Bear's been ev'rywhere," Temari looks smug, her fear forgotten. Gaara doesn't know the definition of "stoo-pid" anyway. Temari warms to the subject. "Bear came with Great Uncle from the sea. And then Grandma sang to him. And then he was given to Father, and now Father says he's mine. That's why you can't take him."

"Dun want!" Gaara shrieks again.

Temari sticks out her tongue, and moves to her futon. Gaara remains sitting in his corner with the fruit. Eventually he places the plate with the fruit just beyond the sand. Minutes pass. Then a whispered: "a shinobi is a master of stealth, and knows no fear." More minutes pass, and Gaara looks around the room, eventually, his face dull. His sand flares up, and his head whips back to look at the plate. Temari is sitting on the futon, chewing, and Bear slumps where there once was fruit.

"Mine!"

"You can have him," Temari says. Gaara looks up as the sand wraps around the teddy. "That's how it works," she adds, all superior. "I got him given to me. Now I give him to you."

Gaara looks confused, but gets up, grasps Bear's leg, and stumbles out of Temari's room. She looks at the ceiling, and whispers: "a shinobi doesn't need physical crutches when they are old enough to learn ninjutsu, anyway."

Her father leaves his shadow.

…

The day that Kankurou comes "home" he's only really there because he follows Tsusho everywhere like a puppy. He is turning into a stocky child, who looks like neither of his parents, although he reminds the Kazekage of the kunochi who was cut to pieces defending a bunch of kids. As Tsusho reports that Kankurou is already capable of making living animals dance, and has had to be reprimanded several times for tying cats' tails together, the Fourth doubts that his son will ever be put in charge of any children.

Kankurou, bored with talk, shifts and squirms uncomfortably until Tsusho tells the boy to go find Yashamaru. He wanders off, and the Kazekage knows that he should be feeling jealous. He just returns to dealing with Tsusho's report on the state of the Troupe, and the pulse of Suna as a whole. The verdict is simple: Sand is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Quite a few shoes have been dropped, the Kazekage comments sourly. When will Suna stop waiting and start doing?

Well, that depends, Tsusho points out. They are all secretly hoping that the Third will return. Or at least get some confirmation that he's dead.

Of course he's dead, the Yondaime snaps. No one may have found the body, but the Sandaime wouldn't do _this_ to Sand. The Third loved the village like his child.

Tsusho doesn't ask what "this" is. He just nods his agreement and switches the topic. So, how is Gaara-Shukaku progressing? He couldn't help but notice that the boy is kept isolated from all of the other three year olds. Does this mean he really can't control himself, or is this just because the Kazekage doesn't understand that social isolation isn't a religion that children should be dedicated to?

He is on very, very unstable ground, the Kazekage comments coldly. The earthquake could happen any moment now.

Tsusho waves off the warning. How will the Kazekage know where the limits of his power are if he doesn't have at least one honest councilor? Or that it's okay to be less than all powerful?

The Kazekage's complicated expression at this statement is interrupted by a scream of pure terror. The couch is a barrier that he simply knocks over, and Tsusho is hard on his heels.

Chuckling of a drunken flavor is coming from the kitchen, and he already knows what has happened as he bursts through the doors. Kankurou is covered in sand, and it's squeezing him, as blue markings crawl over Garra's sandy brown skin, and the black rimmed eyes swirl with yellow four-pointed stars. It's not a full transformation, Gaara's body can't handle that yet, but at three years old he is hunched, and the boy's shoulders have bulged to same height as his father's knees.

Seals form, and suddenly wind whips up, before dying, as Shukaku's eyes hit on the Yondaime's blank face. Kankurou has lost the breath to scream, but the pressure is released. Sand grains push, and attempt to join together against fine barriers of wind sliding them away. The Kazekage isn't sweating (can't afford the distraction) as he maintains the thousands of tightly controlled breezes surrounding each chakra infused sand grain. He doesn't have the ability to do anything else, but keep the barriers in place, and they won't last as he can feel the raw power of Shukaku pushing on him. The only reason his technique is working is because Gaara hasn't trained his chakra channels at this point, and Shukaku is semi-bound by his vessel's limitations.

Kankurou is suddenly ripped away from the vulnerable cage his father had created around him, and he can feel the fine threads of chakra that Tsusho is delicately manipulating. Shukaku roars angrily, laughter gone into an insane rage, and the sand rushes at Tsusho, as the demon throws a devastating blast of wind at the Yondaime. Where the Yondaime _was_. The floor explodes in stone fragments. The knives, skillets and anything not nailed down, throw themselves at the demon, and the sand flares up to block the objects, retreating from Tsusho who has wrapped Kankurou in his robe, and is trying to back out the door.

Above the demon-child the Yondaime appears, twisting to land between the demon and the sand barrier. He throws a glass of water in Shukaku's face. The eyes widen in surprise, and the stars start to spin, changing back to blue as the markings recede. The sand reaches out for the Kazekage, but drops back to the wall as Shukaku shrinks back into Gaara's skin. The Kazekage stands over the boy, his arms crossed, glaring down at him.

Gaara looks up at his father, water still dripping down his face. "I, I --,"

Anger is surging through the Kazekage, his internal barriers turning it into something useful, just like always. The seals form, and he puts one hand up to touch the sand. For now his chakra is stronger, and the grains blast apart under the wind. The knives drop to the floor with a resounding crash. The Yondaime just glares at Gaara one last time, and steps over the barrier of dispersed sand (already moving back together), and dropped kitchen utensils to leave.

By the sink Yashamaru is holding his breath. The Kazekage walks past him, not saying a word, and then Garra runs to his uncle. "I didn't! I didn't! I just fell asleep," the little boy is crying.

Pain stabs through the Kazekage's stomach. _Kankurou was crying, and she rushed to pick him up._ The assault of the memory creeping up from the carefully sealed chambers of the Kazekage's mind makes him nearly run. He's feeling the familiar need to run and fly, rip himself out of his skin.

"I'm bnot/b the other one," Gaara breathes shakily, looking up at Yashamaru with his wide blue-green eyes. "I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not."

"Yes, I know," Yashamaru says, trying to sound as comforting as Tsusho.

"I'm not," Gaara sobs. "I'm not gonna sleep. I'm not."

The Yondaime walks away. If he stays his world might break down right over his son's head.

…

When he's alone, which is rare, he walks down to the sublevels. Most of Suna is actually under the sand. The bath houses, sparing arenas, laboratories, and so many more semi-public domain areas are accessed from basement hatches. The sparing rooms are where he heads when there are no aides, no guards, no Baki, no Yashamaru, nothing to distract him in the ways he clings to during the day.

Adrenaline hums in his veins, drowning out everything, except what he truly wants. Sometimes he just sits and meditates, screaming silently in his own head. Other times he practices his taijutsu until he is ready to drop, and then he keeps on going, his knuckles ripped open and bleeding from the punches he's landing on the unrealistic targets. Sometimes that isn't enough, even then, and he creates a few shadow clones (no more than three, his chakra won't stretch much farther than that in his usual state when he needs to spar against the clones). But some nights, following really horrible days, no amount of training can keep the truth at bay.

It is then that he can apologize to her. Again and again, in his head, or begging for forgiveness in whispers between turning his fists and legs on another target. Often he wakes up the next morning with his throat sore and face sticky from tears, huddled on the ground like a child, amidst the wreck of the room.

He wants forgiveness for being stupid. For being wrong. For believing that if the jinchuuryki was a success, Suna's prosperity would balance out the equation to him. It might have worked out for the Kazekage. It never could have for the man. He wants forgiveness for letting the Kazekage rule his actions until the only place of safety was under the blue and white hat.

She would forgive him in a heartbeat, he knows. She is that kind of person, always forgiving him. But she can't forgive him without coming back. And she never comes back. He never wakes up to discover that it was all a nightmare. So, he knows he's never, ever going to be truly forgiven.

…

Temari is growing up, he realizes with a funny jolt. She is eight. He was a genin at her age. And he realizes this is what she is here for, standing across the desk from him. Standing like a true shinobi should in front of her Kazekage. The blond hair that he admired on her mother is so much thicker now, and has been tied back into four fat, bristling ponytails. His wife only wore her hair up once, on the day of their wedding. And there is a level of furious intensity in her determined scowling face that was never her mother's. And a certain devil-may-care air about her entire stance that reminds him of only one thing: dead, dismembered genin, and why he has worked alone when he has a choice about it.

He tries to ignore all these odd reactions to Temari's appearance; they remind him of times he does not want to remember. Times when he could feel things without the barrier of responsibility to hold them back. Never mind them, he pushes the thoughts to the recesses they belong. Temari is here, Baki behind her, and it's her birthday.

She is visiting today, but only visiting-ish. Today he is Kazekage, because Baki has asked him to assess Temari. Normally Baki, and one other master in her chosen style of combat would watch her for a day, and then tell the Kazekage if the child was ready to kill. Of course, Baki must be banking on the fact that he will pass his daughter, and get Temari out from under Baki's feet. Not likely, but if his former student can't be observant that is Baki's problem.

He nods finally, and rises from his desk. They can go to the practice grounds before lunch, he tells her. Temari smiles, an expression that walks the line between triumph and uncertainty. Does she even know what's going to happen?

He doesn't give her any set task. When she asks what they should do, he merely replies that these are the practice grounds, and if she wants to stay here she needs to practice.

She nods, and rushes at a target with a kunai in both hands. She isn't one of those lithe thin limbed girls, but she doesn't have the body to be anything more than an average taijutsu artist. So why does her style, if that is what it can be called at this stage, involve close up fighting which she is not going to be truly skilled at? he wonders, as she slashes the target in half with an impressive upper cut from one of her kunai.

She whirls throwing her second kunai at a target which appears behind her. A third shard of metal is pulled from the pouch behind her, and she swings out with her legs to catch the next target.

Very good. So she'll survive if she is attacked by sand bags tied to metal stakes, and cardboard that pops out of the ground at random intervals. The Kazekage reaches into a pouch almost unconsciously, and black serrated discs of death tumble into his palm. The shuriken whistle shrilly through the air, but Temari just whirls, and the kunai moves in a blur, knocking five of them off course, two more clanging off her mesh covered shoulder.

The Yondaime leaps to the left, suddenly just another shinobi again. Shuriken whirl through the air, shredding the wind, heading for the little girl's vital spots. It's been three seconds. She blocks effortlessly, and jumps back.

Only he's behind her, his fist slamming into her spine. She pitches forward, and hits the ground rolling. The first thing a shinobi has to learn is how to fall. She doesn't even cry out, getting shakily to her knees. Seven seconds.

She blocks the flying kunai with a swift upward stroke of her steel weapon, and his eyes widen. He barely rolls out of the way as a gust of wind shrieks toward him. The stone of the arena cracks and sends up fine fragments. He looks over to see Baki standing impassively. Temari is a wind user. For some reason this fact stuns him long enough for one of her shuriken to slice open his cheek.

He catches the next kunai, and flings it back. She tries to block it, swinging her kunai by the ring. Swing, swing. He doesn't see his kunai hit because he's jumping back to avoid a second cutting gust of air. Eighteen seconds. She is only eight. He lasted for thirty when he was two years younger than her, but even then they had all assumed that he'd be a prodigy.

His fingers slip and slide together as he masks the action with a grab at his shuriken bag. Temari tenses, kunai ready to block the hit that will never come, because she disappears. Stars burst in his skull as the kunai's handle smashes into his temple. He ignores them, and twirls, hitting Temari with a swift punch to the gut. She crumples like a rag around his fist. He throws her to the ground, and stands over her. He nods, satisfied.

Something flashes in the light and he reaches up to catch the metal plate on its blue ribbon. He drops it at Temari's feet. Twenty-five seconds. She hit him. He is getting old. She is growing up.

…

Temari wears the hitae-ate like a head band in a little girl's hair. A strange contrast to her boyish face and frame. She is beaming all through the lunch they have together. He finally asks, knowing he shouldn't, if she remembers her mother.

She tilts her blond head to the side thoughtfully, chewing on oil soaked pita-bread. "Not really," she finally says.

When her father turns away to order more bread, and incidentally hide the look of relieved sadness, Temari thinks that she makes a fairly good ninja. She's hidden the lie very well. Of course, she doesn't remember her mother's looks, despite the fact that she is told that they can be found in the mirror. But she remembers the events. She remembers having seen her father's smile. But like all rare creatures it has gone into hiding. Or perhaps it is dead.

…

He looks at Yashamaru from the safety of the wooden desk. Yashamaru merely looks questioning.

"Can the jinchuuryki control Shukaku?"

"I -- Gaara can control Shukaku while he is awake. And he stays awake all the time now. But control is different from being able to use Shukaku's full powers. Only Shukaku can do that, apparently. Gaara can only keep them from being used, and he can't shut off the sand defense mechanism," Yashamaru answers like a good shinobi.

"So, our jinchuuryki only works half way?" the Kazekage steeples his fingers. "When Shukaku does come out, it only wishes to serve it's own indulgent need for entertainment -- no matter how bloody that might be. It seems that the experiment I requested of Chiyo-sama has failed."

"Will Shukaku be resealed?"

The black holes bore into Yashamaru. The Yondaime appears to be considering things. Then the barest whispers: "No. Better that this ends with Gaara," the Kazekage nods his head decisively, and speaks in a more regular tone. "I will be taking out a contract on the boy's head, Yashamaru. Don't stand in the way of whoever kills him."

"Kazekage--,"

"That was an order. He has been your charge for the last six years, and now I am ordering you not to protect him. Do not go against me in this," the Kazekage's voice is as harsh as the caress of Shukaku's Breath.

"That wasn't what I was going to say, sir," Yashamaru replies. "I will take the contract. He will be dead by morning."

The Yondaime stares. "He has been -- you've been raising the jinchuuryki, Yashamaru."

"He killed my sister. I have taken care of him because I have been ordered to do so. No compassion exists in our connection. He is the one at fault, and if ever he proved not to be useful to the village, then I would be the ideal candidate to kill him, Kazekage."

There is nothing but honest emotion in Yashamaru's expression. Horrible hatred and loathing shines from the repressive slate blue eyes. The Yondaime just nods. He has killed children before. It is horrible, but easily done. Yashamaru knows the same. That is a shinobi's life. It may be that Yashamaru has picked the wrong target for his vengeance, but the Kazekage will not argue. If he can use Yashamaru then that is all that matters.

So he tells himself. It is only Shukaku's Pity that keeps him from doing the deed himself. In a way, Yashamaru deserves this chance more than any other. Yet, if Shukaku's power is channeling through the boy -- well, that is Yashamaru's look-out.

He is about to lose his brother. But in a way, he is merely giving Yashamaru back to the winds. He hopes that Yashamaru will be carried to his sister's side. It was what the shinobi needs, after all.

…

There is a second, just one moment, when he realizes that everything could be different. He feels the shock run through him, cold and biting as the desert night. If he were to reach out now, and turn back the pale blob coming through the shadows, everything might be different.

Yashamaru will wait forever on the roof top that the jinchurryki has claimed as his own. The boy will be back at home with milk and cookies. The Yondaime might even speak to the child. He can change this.

Gaara stops, looking up with an odd mixture of Temari and Kankurou's expressions in the fuzzy light of the Kazekage's broken vision. Hope, longing, fear, regret -- the Yondaime can change all of this instantly. If he doesn't change this one valuable shinobi will die tonight. Gaara looks up at the man who shares his red hair and moon burned skin. For a second the father, chained and bound by the hat and veil of the Kazekage, sees his son.

If he doesn't change this, Shukaku might truly awaken. Yashamaru, faithful Yashamaru, might die. Gaara, no matter what happens tonight, almost certainly will. If he doesn't change this.

All the futures stretch before him in this instant. He can make his son into the child he should have been. He can save his brother from what is almost certain death. He can let Yashamaru kill Gaara. Yashamaru could force Gaara to truly retreat in pain, letting Shukaku have the body forever. Shukaku, the village's most potent weapon, at the cost of his brother and his son.

The Kazekage wins.

Gaara, with his disappointed eyes, continues up to the roof top.


	6. Vulture

Author's Note: It's not over 'til the snake is fed, folks. And there's an epilogue, stay tuned. Nothing much to say, except this chapter is probably best read while listening to 5. Maerz by Megahertz. A working knowledge of German might help, but the music sets up enough of the mood without the lyrics, if you don't happen to be familiar with German. Still, the lyrics are haunting, for those who can translate them. And thanks to you mysterious 5 readers who have stuck with me this far. I hope some of you are the people who've reviewed in the past, but new mystery readers are wonderful, too.

...

Temari wants to know where her father has gone. It isn't like him to miss one of her visits. Baki replies that something happened to the Hidden Leaf, and her father must go to express his condolences. Temari doesn't understand why: Didn't they all hate the Leaf nin?

Yes, but her father is Kazekage, and they must be polite. The Sandaime Hokage came to Suna after the incident with Sasori. Of course, Temari wouldn't remember that. It was almost before her time.

Temari walks through the crowded but small marketplace with her mentor, observing the other ninja taking the air. The jounin seem to be secretly celebrating. The word is gently circulating on the breeze with vindictive joy. Nothing is left of the Uchiha. Temari remembers the clan's name, abilities, and numbers from the record books. There were a bunch of little Uchiha boys and girls younger than Kankurou, weren't there? If this had happened to a Suna clan everyone would be mourning. Shrieks of pain would rend the desert air for miles around as they felt the sorrow.

It already has happened to Suna, Baki says sharply. Why does she think she and Kankurou have no one their age to play with?

Temari keeps her mouth shut, knowing that Baki-sensei is right. It isn't just because of Gaara that Temari has no one other than her mentor to talk to. But she also knows that Baki-sensei is wrong, too. Sometimes adults can be wrong.

…

She tells this to Kankurou, the next time she sees him. He rolls purple painted eyes and tells her he stopped living in awe of grown ups a long time ago, and she needs to be mature about things. Temari hits him with a small hand fan that belonged to their mother, a silk thing with steel ribs.

A puppet comes swinging at her, and she has to duck, before sending kunai for his head. He deflects them with a wooden arm grabbed on chakra strings. Temari flips backward to avoid the thrust of a poisoned needle. The one armed puppet looms behind her, and she rushes at Kankurou.

Neither would call themselves taijutsu specialists, but they know how to fight, and fight well. Temari has the advantage of height and weight, nearly eleven years old to Kankurou's nine. One punch sends Kankurou reeling out into the hall, and she chases after him to press her advantage. But instead of readying himself to repel her charge Kakuro is frozen and shaking.

From the office at the top of the stairs sand is spilling in a waterfall, which arcs back up once it reaches the upper limits of Shukaku's willingness to leave his vessel unprotected. Gaara stands up there, his blue eyes alien and empty (or not quiet alien, Temari thinks, knowing the blank expression on an older face).

At the door their father looks up at his youngest. No wonder Kankurou froze up. Temari learns in that instant what murderous intent feels like. It shocks her to her spine. She can feel Gaara's chakra seeking to punch out of his skin like a sharp spike. The hate and desire for death are palpable in the air.

"I need something to hold more sand," Gaara states, ignoring his siblings, because they simply aren't interesting enough to eliminate.

Temari marvels that so many words come out of the small boy's mouth. But he isn't a boy anymore. He is something else. Not the demon, but not the boy either. This is not the boy who had been so excited to learn about apologies.

Her father is silent. He just keeps his eyes locked on Gaara, and Temari wonders what messages are passing between them, or if they understand each other at all.

"Gaara," he stops, and waits a few moments before trying again. "Why?" The word is lead heavy, and serious as the test Temari went through to become a geinin.

Gaara shifts uncomfortably, unsure, Temari is certain, about how to articulate his desire. "Shinobi don't always fight in the dessert."

Her father nods. That was the right answer. They continue staring at one another, waiting for the cue card that will tell them the conversation is over. Abruptly the Kazekage marches up the stairs. The waterfall of sand lets him through. At the top he barks at Kankurou to talk to Tsucho. See if the genius can cook up something for Gaara.

Kankurou unfreezes momentarily to sit down with a whoosh. He and Temari exchange glances. "Well, fear isn't awe," he mumbles. Temari is too busy thinking that Gaara, already seven, declared that he would become a shinobi, and her father accepted that.

…

The Kazekage stands with his back to the young boy. Sand swirls outside in a fierce storm. He can see the demon's reflection in the glass, and the expression of cold disgust on the face which is no longer boyish.

You're afraid of me, the eyes say. I see you for what you are.

The Kazekage keeps his expression blank. The hitae-ite is on the table between them.

"Will you serve Sunagakure?"

"Yes."

"Take it, then. Someone will tell you your squad once assignments are made."

Gaara takes it, and goes out. He passes Temari on the way. She forces herself not to flinch. Kankurou, dressed in black and standing in the shadow of the door, cannot help but shrink back. The Kazekage recognizes the expression that Gaara wears. He would kill both of them without hesitation if it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Under the white robes, the ruthless man wonders what he has done. No piece of humanity should have survived Shukaku, and yet Gaara is still undeniably Gaara. His own person and not the demon. Possibly this is even more terrifying than merely dealing with Shukaku. Possibly Gaara was strong enough to survive Shukaku's Breath. The Kazekage wonders what the stars tell the boy.

Temari and Kankurou come in, Baki shutting the door behind them. Temari looks at her father. The Kazekage finds something disturbing in that look, as though she knows what he is going to say, and she is disappointed by his choices. It occurs to the Kazekage that she is nothing like her mother. Baki says, rather bluntly, that they still have room on their squad, and they're the only genin cell with even a chance of surviving Gaara, aren't they?

The Kazekage nods. Kankurou shivers, while Temari sighs quietly.

…

Times are bad. Kankurou knows this. He doesn't like knowing this, but Tsusho is now taking anyone who so much as chips a puppet to town. The troupe can't afford, and the head puppeteer uses the miserly merchants' word through gritted teeth, wood to make repairs. Steel is at too high a premium to make nails, repair rusted joints, or do anything else asked of it.

It takes all his courage to ask the Kazekage why the things they need for weapons are becoming so scare when they need to complete missions with their weapons. As always when the pit-like gaze is turned on him, Kankurou thinks he's going to be hauled off and beaten, or sent away like a child, _or given to Gaara_. The Kazekage is at least as murderous as Shukaku and Gaara. If Kankurou watches Gaara's expression like a hawk the puppeteer has the possibility of knowing when he has to step around the corner and run. With the leader of Suna, Kankurou can't even tell what he's thinking. Just that it can't be pleasant.

The Kazekage is surprised, actually, by the intelligence that this question poses. He had not believed that there was much in Kankurou's head, other than torturing and belittling others. This is a question he would have expected from Temari (too brash and forward for her own good, but he's already sent her on B-rank missions and she's entitled to a little unwomanly brazenness each time she's come back alive).

However, the answer is simple. It's the same answer it has always been. The Wind Country does not have wood to log, and the skilled workers of metal have moved away. The Fire Country holds them now. Soon the merchants who bring the fruits of the mines to the Hidden Village will stop coming to Suna. The Village of the Hidden Leaf is a better prospect.

Kankuro nods, trying to imagine what life in Konohakagure must be like. Lots of fat babies, he decides, and smiling mothers, who are all beautiful like the woman in the pictures in Uncle Yashamaru's room. No one is loud and angry like Temari, or quiet and frightening like Gaara. Bitter, terrifying men like his father don't exist. Life in Konoha must be paradise. Kankurou hates them for being happy with the wood and steel he needs for his craft.

…

Missions come and go. Temari is making a name for herself. Kankurou is not, in the way of puppeteers. Gaara, it goes without saying, is well known. Notorious. The Kazekage looks at the map on the wall, and the pins that are the lives of Suna shinobi on missions. Their generation is sparsely populated right now. He only has two active genin teams, and only one that he will dare let out of the wind country. Needless to say, Shukaku is staying inside the desert's border. The Kazekage is waiting for the next war to break out, and Gaara will finally be put to the use he was made for.

Until then the Kazekage must still reckon up the costs of this weapon he has made. His wife. His brother. The boy that Gaara was, or might have been. Why does hindsight have to be so clear on that point? He couldn't feel anything for his wife, but he can't stop _feeling_ for her thrice damned son! Why?! Why does she only have a void in his chest?! Why does he care for the misbegotten crying boy?! How can he feel this way? Why is he continuing to betray her?

His mind, running in circles and snapping at its own tail shifts to the side, and moves back to the more stable ground of the cost of a jinchurriki. He forces it there gladly. The girl. The Kazekage remembers her terrified scream of agony as she was crushed, and the shiny, glistening vicious smile on Gaara's face. The girl, who, as far as the Yondaime can remember, had done nothing more terrible than try to push past Gaara to get home. And there have been the squad accidents when they grouped other genin squads together on single missions. Not that more than one three man team has been completely eliminated, nor that it was even Gaara's fault that the squad walked into a rock slide. But people serving with Gaara seem to have a higher level of injury. And then there are the bodies of the civilians.

Perhaps the Kazekage will rule the Wind Country through fear, after all.

…

He has done the wrong thing, the Kazekage admits to himself, watching Temari, Kankurou, and Gaara walk firmly across a sandy courtyard. They do not walk as a team. Temari is contemplating something, the man can tell from the way she is not paying any attention to the traders who have just arrived. She is too absorbed in her own thoughts, and Kankurou is veering away from his brother and sister at every opportunity, looking at this and that, trying to hide his desire to be far away from Gaara. Gaara is looking up at the spire. His father can see the black blots of his eye rings in the pale fuzz of the boy's face, although all other features are indistinguishable. However, as always, their eyes meet across the distance, and hate dances along the connection.

They should not have been made into a team. They should have been tested and tempered the way he was. Well, perhaps not Kankurou. And Temari has the double burden of being a kunochi. But Gaara should be a jounin now, if his brains are equal to his power. You do not need teamwork to be a jounin, the way you do desperately need it at genin level. And the siblings are not a team. They are a front. A façade.

Temari's loudness, rough boyishness, hides the mind which works towards finding the truth (a foolish objective for a ninja). Kankuro's bullying hides his fear, and warns others away his presence (and by extension Gaara's; what inventive misdirection). Gaara is blunt. To the point. Honest in his own way. The Kazekage knows that he can kill, but he has not yet learned how to focus himself towards the mission, and only the mission. Being in a team lets him indulge in his own interests and whimsy. The Kazekage sees too much of Shukaku in that unreliability. Such sloppiness is a weakness, as well. He was wrong in his method of training, and Gaara is a failure.

…

The traders carry news to the Kazekage. The shinobi of the newly (in comparison to the five great villages, at least) formed Hidden Village of Sound request an alliance. The Yondaime reviews the terms, and the other names on the list. Rain. Grass. Sound. Odd. All they would need to form an "Enemies of Konoha" club would be Rock. Rain, Grass, Sound, and Sand. And they have requests. A plan that needs the abilities of Suna's newest generation.

The question, why no genin should be allowed to participate in any chuunin exam until Leaf's, is easily answered. Someone knows about his half formed plans, and about Gaara. Under the veil he wears in the day time, the Kazekage's lips thin. Perhaps this is the impetus he needs.

Or perhaps it will be the trial through Shukaku's Breath that they all need.

…

Perhaps this is a dream. Or another hallucination. The moon is riding high and full, and he has walked to the edge of a roof, and is watching the shadows below him with an impossible clarity. Behind him there is the shift of sand, and he knows this is it.

Chuckling. "I'd never push you over. Sake?"

He sits down next to the curled, monstrous mound of sand. The star-filled eyes are scrunched in a grin that is full of fangs. A massive paw holds out a small cup like a thimble, and he accepts it mutely. The brown cup with blue swirls that sits in front of the creature is the size of the Kazekage's head, and one arm dives into a sandy stomach to bring out a water skin. Rice wine pours from it, first into the brown cup, and then into his white thimble.

"So, tell us a story," the monster commands, before laughing at the look on his face. The laughter is shrill and horrible, half drunk.

"I won't kill you. Why would I do that? It's against the principle. You're mine already," Shukaku leers at him, and licks his jagged lips. 'That boy of yours, now, he I'd like to kill. He puts up such a fight. Every day, every night. But he's wearing thin. I'll have him eventually. And then, who knows," the raccoon-dog shrugs expansively. "Maybe I'll protect this little dump you hate so much. Maybe I'll trash it. I haven't decided. So, tell us a story."

The Wind Rider finds his voice at last. "What story could I possibly tell?"

"You used to be pretty good at them. I remember every year you would lay on that rock above my cavern, and tell all those lovely little lies. I loved 'em. Pretty little things, lies, you know. So, give me a story. Give me an old story."

The Kazekage doesn't know what imp of the perverse has possessed him as he obeys, beginning with the oldest story of them all, made before the Village was settled, before men dared to track through the wastes.

"When the stars fell from the sky," Skukaku adds softly in the right place, grinning widely, as he settles his great bulk into a more comfortable position.

Yes, for one man was there. He watched the stars fall, and he mourned at the loss of such great spirits as they must have been. But then the stars appeared before him, as enormous eyes were opened. A grin stretched between massive jaws, big enough to swallow the world.

Shukaku chuckles, at once the audience, and the character of the desert demon.

The man had walked the desert, following his own path. Men and women had warned him not to set foot in the blistering land, as it was the abode of ghosts, but his path was calling him there anyway. And now he met the greatest spirit of the land. The demon lord of the desert, a being of wind and sand.

"And why didn't this devil eat the man?"

Exactly what the great beast asked, more amused than hungry, but when that changed, the monk would have nowhere to run. The man replied that he was following a path that lead through the world.

"So does everyone else," Shukaku replies derisively.

The man was impressed by this statement, and he told the demon so. Not everyone understands that they all have paths to follow. Some try to fight them, and some roll off them, and some walk them backwards, but he knows if he just waits calmly and keeps his inner eyes and ears open, he'll be able to follow his, and there will be no problem. Anyway, he was listening, and his path didn't end in the monster's belly. So, they might as well sit down and talk until it was time to walk along the path again.

Perhaps the demon was impressed by the audacity. Perhaps he was just bored with the emptiness of the desert. No reason could be divined, this creature liked to be unpredictable and unguessable. He sat, and spoke with the man about his domain, about the endless sky, and the howling winds, and the seas of sand. Of the rocks thrusting bravely through the shifting ground. Of the cold stars so high above. Of the ghosts that walked, and how all bowed to him, the great sand tanuki.

In return the man favored him with stories of lands far beyond his domain, where the ground was green with grass, and thick with trees. Of lakes where enemies were destined to meet as friends. Of otters, playing in rivers, and stealing rice from honest monks. Of men who performed secret miracles, and then stole away before their kindness could be discovered.

"A lovely land," Shukaku agrees, "but not for the demon. He had his place, where he was master."

Yes, and that was the point. The great monster told the man, with all politeness, that he was welcome back in the desert. But if he brought others with him, they would be the victims of Shukaku's mercy, and he might eat any that looked tasty. The man nodded, and asked if they could have tea the next time he saw the monster.

"And?" Shukaku wants to know, somewhat impatiently, as the Yondaime lapses into silence.

"And he gets up and walks away. They will meet again on another night."

"Ah. Always leave them wanting more. It's a pity. They wasted a talented story teller, making you a shinobi. Not that I can complain."

The Kazekage doesn't reply. Shukaku grins. "You're mine. The boy, maybe not. But you're mine. Go fly, little eagle. I have no more use for you. For now."

…

The envoy wears and ANBU mask, but that says nothing, anyone can wear one of those, and they are spectacular when you want to hide your face. However, it does not fit properly, it juts out just too far, perhaps making room for spectacles.

The Kazekage considers the possibility. He might have to cave at this point. He knows that the mask has green markings, but they blend with the white so much that he can't tell for the life of him what the markings are. Another blow to his village. A blind Kazekage. Perhaps he should initiate the trials after this business with Sound is all over. A broken man cannot lead a broken village.

Holding on until the Third comes back is only slightly more realistic at this point than waking up and discovering that this was all a nightmare of the trenches, and he has to survive long enough to get back to the village and see his brave girl. Perhaps he would get lucky, and he would wake up even earlier than that, on the night he decided to take the C rank mission. He could decide, then, that the escort duty is beneath his strength as a shinobi, and never curse the siblings by meeting them. He would be a driven shinobi, destined to die on some angry shuriken at another place, and another time, but she, at least, would live. Probably become some fat merchant's wife. They might even meet as he kills her husband for being too rich during war time. Their eyes would meet in the darkness, topaz and teal separated by porcelain, and he might be weak for a moment, and let her live -- a response to the unknown life where she was the girl who taught him how to fold sheets of paper.

Only stories.

He realizes that he has kept the envoy waiting long enough. He says that he shall meet with the man's master, as agreed. They shall discuss terms. He is interested in the alliance. Will it really break Konoha?

If the fabled moonlight demon of Suna does his part, the mask replies.

The Kazekage nods, and dismisses the man.

...

The council chamber, hidden under rock and sand, is cold. The Yondaime looks up at the Sandaime. The face is wrong; forbidding when it should have been laughing, stern and stiff as death, rather than clever and lively. Still, the image brings some familiarity.

What should I do?

On the other side of the village the Yondaime can almost feel Shukkaku's teapot. The answer is obvious. Kill those who interfere with the wind and sand.

But the Sandaime would just shake his head. The Yondaime has failed Suna. He has kept it together through force of will, but he has failed all the same.

The Yondaime knows. He is Kazekage, but he is also a person. There is only one thing to do when such an egregious error has been made. Honor, which he doesn't have, demands his death. His life, a shinobi's killing path, demands that he kill everyone else. The memory of the only teacher who stayed alive long enough to see his marriage demands he fix what he has done. The Sandaime never believed it was never too late.

It is too late for some things. No matter how I apologize she never comes back.

...

He sits on the roof, waiting for the dawn. The world is black. The wind brings him reassurances on the lack of assassins, but the Kazekage is fairly certain that Sound would rather tear off their own skin before letting him die.

Sand shifts. Quite a lot of sand and quite close by. He can feel the rage and murderous hate envelop the rooftop like a cloak.

"I couldn't sleep."

"I can't sleep," Gaara's voice sounds so strange, as if he's fighting with each word he uses. Still, the blame is clear. I cannot sleep because you placed an insane demon inside me. I want my atrocities to be my own.

The Kazekage is silent in return. There is not much one can say in reply. Gaara clearly wants to talk some more because he begins again. "The moon is bright tonight."

So that was the gray tinge on his vision. The Kazekage is gratified, but silent.

"It is not yet full. He gets very restless when the moon is full. It is just a crescent, though."

The Yondaime wonders if he ever sounds this stilted and confused when he speaks. One thing that sets Gaara apart from Shukaku is that Shukaku can at least hold a conversation while sober. Inane as that conversation may be. Actually, Shukaku might be able to best Gaara at interpersonal relations while drunk, too.

"I wouldn't know," the Kazekage replies simply. "You have better eyes than I."

"I didn't know that," the sand shifts, and the Kazekage wonders if Gaara is touching the black rings around his eyes like a little boy. Hardly. Just a story. "You can't see the stars, then." A small thought echoes around both of them. We have nothing in common.

"I used to. When I was young."

Silence, as Gaara either digests this information, or struggles with his words. They are awkward, strange people. They have that much in common. Or had. He is the Kage. Gaara is the jinchuuryki.

"I can't fight him when the moon is full." That's why I've failed, isn't it? The Yondaime imagines Gaara's unspoken words. Rage and anger have certainly begun to pulse here, as they sit alone on the roof top.

"As the village has learned to their cost."

"What is the meaning of my existence then?" Gaara asks. His voice is low, dangerous. The Kazekage realizes with light-headed relief that he will die tonight.

"You might as well ask what is the meaning of mine," his father replies, rising.

A man should be standing when he dies. But instead, the murderous intent is snuffed out, and the rooftop becomes empty of the emotional undercurrent. Like a candle flame in the wind.

He jumps from the roof he has chosen as place to think. Behind him, Gaara suddenly screams in frustration, his voice threading upward to the moonlight, a lonely wail.

...

The day has come. The wind is blowing from the north, oddly refreshing to feel during the day. He has told no one of his decision to meet with the leader of Sound. The Kazekage can imagine how welcome the news that they were planning to betray the false alliance with the Leaf would be. But he is not even certain that is what he is going to the meeting for.

These are facts:

1. Sound is in the Rice Country

2. His wife is from Rice

This is supposition:

This mysterious leader of Sound might be the solution to the ill-fated choice that led her to cross his path.

He sets off, heading for the far edge of the desert with two body guards, and no clear goals in mind. The mind that once planned the deaths of children, and ignored the deaths of people he knew, is awash in watercolor. The wind invigorates him with possibilities, and an uncertain feeling of destiny.

Fact: He is losing his focus in favor of half-formed fiction.

…

He recognizes the snake-like face, although something is slightly wrong with it. It is as though Orochimaru is peeling away into an explosion of colored flashes. Behind the white mask, the kazekage's lips try to lift into a disused rueful smile.

"Tell me, when did you first come to the Country of the Rice? I would like to know of your village's history," the Kazekage asks, story teller, liar, and curious.

The snake man smiles. Possibly. Or a black gash opens in his face, as far as the Yondaime's eyes can tell. "Come," the honeyed stones still pour from the man's words. "Let us dispense with pleasantries. I would like to get down to business."

"You want to use Gaara," the Yondaime Kazekage states.

He is alone, and the snake man brought retainers, possibly to impress him. Most likely not. To terrify him, perhaps. To kill him, probably, if he isn't a good puppet. Doll. Do they know he can't see more than smudges of color in the daylight? Does it matter now? He can save himself from those smudges. If he agrees to destroy Leaf, which he wants to. Empty gesture, but honor demands it.

_Only shinobi understand other shinobi_. A wise man had said that once. Long ago, when he had believed the Third was still alive. He understands the leaf traitor perfectly. Ten years a missing nin. Ten years. The day Temari had brought him flowers, and he realized his wife, the bravest girl ever to hold him, had been dead for a year.

What might have changed if he had done the right thing? Would Temari smile, and act like a normal girl? Perhaps he could actually hold a proper conversation with Kankurou, father to eldest son. Gaara might have been his mother's favorite. Small and quiet, running to catch up with his older siblings. The Kazekage admits this now. He has always made the most evil choices he can.

Maybe there is a path to forgiveness, after all. Maybe, when they fall, he can pick them up again.

"No, you won't use Gaara." Shukaku. His god. His son. No one can use his son. Gaara is stronger than that. He is broken, but he survived. His father will die as a kazekage.

He doesn't even have time to release the sickle winds he has been preparing. He feels the sting of the puncture wounds, and venom filling his body, as he falls backward. His eyes are open, and for a moment, all he can see is his brave girl, grinning at him, hand outstretched. A small, last burst of chakra causes the winds to dance, as agony contorts his body. The snake slides off him, belly scales rough against his robes. And he is flying, rising up and catching the thermals over the desert as he soars into the blue sky.


	7. Shadows

Author's Note: Wow, it's done. You stuck with me through a lot of pages, 98 on MS Word, to be exact, and a lot of experimental stuff on my part. I'd like to say thanks for reading. Since reposting this story here, Break Down has been chewing at my brain again. I finished this almost two years ago, but in the last few weeks I've been thinking about the stories that I wasn't able to include here because they didn't involve the breaking of our Yondi Kazekage, or didn't even focus on him, or happened after he was dead. The epilogue was supposed to get those ideas out of my system, but they weren't able to all come out. Of note: there was a very sketchy Yashamaru section, a deeper reaction to the Sand Sibs coming back from Konoha than we get in Kankuro's piece, a Tsusho short (yes, I sometimes indulge my OCs a bit too much), and several pieces describing the former geinin teammates of the Kazekage, and his mother that just didn't fit into the narrative in a smooth way. I probably will publish some, if not all of them in the coming weeks, as I also begin to update Stupid School Project once again. Anyway, thanks for reading, may you catch the tiger by the tail.

~ MorriganFearn

...

They never celebrated Gaara's birthday for obvious reasons. Indeed, Temari and Kankurou rarely visited on those days, and Yashamaru wandered off somewhere he could be alone. The Yondaime never celebrated this day, but he did not go to work either. So, what usually happened, what had happened since Gaara turned three, was that the two, Kazekage and jinchuuryki, stayed together the whole day, and never spoke.

In the morning they would meet in the kitchen. Gaara drank milk, and the Kazekage pulled leftovers from the pantry into something resembling a meal. Once the kitchen was abandoned Gaara would follow the Kazekage into the living room.

He sat in the living room and tried to make his stunned thought processes come together. Gaara would watch, hug his bear, or play with toys. As he grew older, Gaara just contented himself with watching. Once, when he was eleven he almost reached out to touch his father's shoulder. But inside his head Shukaku laughed at him, and told him the Kazekage would never justify his existence. Dead or alive, Gaara's father was the one person who would never give him a reason for living. His hand dropped.

The afternoons had the two of them going to the Mesa. The Yondaime would stop at the monument recording fallen shinobi, because it was only right that the Kazekage remember, and was seen remembering, but the memories of the monument were hollow. He would reach the Mesa after the few moments of remembering dismembered bodies, and he always did this alone, despite the fact that Gaara would shadow him like the ghost the boy was. He always stood on the Mesa alone, watching the desert and Suna spread out around him, holding up the sky above. Gaara stood there, at his right hand, totally alone, too.

They continued this ritual of standing alone, and thinking, until the starlight reduced the Kazekage to a blind man. Then they would go home. The days passed by each year, with occasional cosmetic changes (Temari brought flowers one year, they saw Kankurou at the graveside of his mother with a puppet another, Yashamaru came home dead drunk when Gaara was five, and he would never be there again on Gaara's seventh birthday, Gaara killed an assassin before breakfast on his eighth birthday, a sandstorm was winding down as they walked north on the eleventh birthday), but nothing really important changed the act of the ritual. On Gaara's birthdays they were always alone.

The Yondaime always wondered at the end of each day why he wasn't fed to the sand this year, when he was at his most vulnerable, and would almost welcome the embrace that killed his wife.

Gaara always wondered at the end of each day why he was not fighting off wind element jutsu, and feeling the full force of the cold fury he knew was locked behind those expressionless eyes.

Then, one year, the Kazekage is not there when Gaara climbs the steps of the mesa. He brings Kankurou the next year, because it is too strange to be on the plateau, looking out at the desert, and not have someone to be alone with. But it is not just a cosmetic change this time. The world finally has moved on.

...

Kankurou's first glimpse of Konoha was exactly as he'd thought it would be. The village was prosperous. The children were happy. The women were smiling. He immediately hated them all. It was so easy to smile sinisterly, and want to impale every person wearing a leaf symbol with poisoned needles.

It was a lot harder, he discovered, a month later, and many years wiser, to forgive them for being right. Well, it wasn't so much "them" as it was "him," the fox jinchuuryki. Still he had been right about Gaara when all these years Kankurou had been wrong. There was no way the apology Gaara had given them was anything other than the validation of the fox kid's view. Somewhere inside the demon, Gaara was still a person.

It had rankled Kankurou. He had enough dramatic flare in him to feel that there was no turning back. Gaara was now a person, and the conclusion of the drama awaited them at home in ways that not even Temari, with her smug older sister wisdom (she was the wise guardian of the play, Kankurou the fool, and Gaara had somehow gone from nemesis to hero) could foresee.

He'd been ready, ready for the first time in his life to stand up to his father. Gaara had always been a nightmare. But their father was a terror Kankurou had never gotten over. This time, though, Gaara had said that he was sorry. Kankuro was ready to defend Gaara, protect the slight eleven year old from the pitiless holes of the Yondaime's eyes.

He felt defeated and relieved when he returned home. There was no more Kazekage. When the search teams found the flayed body Temari locked herself in her room for days, and Gaara just disappeared; Kankurou was happy. The Kazekage was gone. He had nothing more to fear, and everything to celebrate.

As he listens to the men reading the will, and dividing possessions, Kankurou treasures these thoughts. Temari stands proudly, a stoic ninja in the face of bad news. She gets the only thing of value their father had, Mother's trunk, with jewelry, fancy clothes, and books. Gaara is right beside her in this, his silence suffocating the thoughts about the Yondaime Kazekage that must be rushing through his head. He gets a book of fairy tales for his sleepless nights. Kankurou, standing away from the two siblings, gets nothing in the form of a burned hawk mask. The puppeteer just smiles. It's not sinister. The expression is happy, like those children in Konoha who laughed three months ago.

...

The thought was perplexing, but it was all Temari could think right then, as the lanterns were lit all over Konoha. Why, she wondered, did Konoha bother with calendar dates? Why did Suna not? It was the Star Watching Festival in the Hidden Village of the Leaves, but she knew that in Suna the festival wasn't likely to happen until Shukaku's Breath stopped, and the sandstorm died down.

"Could you please make your move?"

She looked across the board at Shikamaru, and then down at the board.

"Sorry, I was just thinking," she replied, getting up. "My head's not in the game."

Shikamaru was quiet for a few moments, but then he began to pack up the pieces. "Troublesome woman," he muttered. This was the third game she had put off. Temari didn't understand why Shikamaru was so keen on it, since he'd always been a better strategist, and she generally lost the other gamed they played with sharp steel and shadows. "Yen for your thoughts?" he inquired.

"I was just thinking we always know when Gaara's birthday is," Temari replied, looking at a red lantern with yellow dragonflies dancing on the stiff paper. "The day after the final winter storm when the flowers all bloom. Every year. But I couldn't tell you the date."

"Huh. Well, that's how you do things," Shikamaru shrugged, and stood up, the shougi set under his arm. Temari realized that he had grown. Once he was only as tall as Kankurou, now he topped her by an inch.

"What about your birthday?"

"Huh?" Temari tore her eyes away from the red lantern over his shoulder. "Oh, that's easy, the third sandstorm of summer. I was told Mother threw father out of the room, and he said--"

Shikamaru waited patiently as Temari trailed off. He had already seen the quicksand in the conversation. But the Sand shinobi seemed so distracted. It was almost unnerving Shikamaru. He was used to the tough, competent, warm Temari. They'd been having more and more awkward moments as they grew up, but suddenly he was seeing a distant ineffable Temari.

"He said," she repeated and paused again. "Huh. I wonder who told me? Baki never, never spoke about him with anything less than total respect. Tsusho, maybe? Well, he said that he wasn't sure what was more dangerous, the weather, or her temper. I wonder if he ever loved her," Temari trailed off, and began to walk away from their seats at the small ramen shop.

Shikamaru followed. He was certain that Temari was not entirely in Konoha right now, and he did not want the Suna liaison walking into things.

"You know, it's very quiet here," Temari told him. "The sun is almost down, and I can't hear anything stirring. Back home the music will have been going since noon. Baki once told me that he missed the sounds of children only on the Star Watching Festival. It's the only day we really spoiled children. They could stay up as long as they wanted. They could have danced with their crushes as closely as they liked. Everyone used to speak of the Festival like there was magic to it."

"Well, it's always been a favorite festival for everyone," Shikamaru replied. "What stopped?"

"What do you mean?" Temari asked, turning her face towards him, and Shikamaru saw a flash of aquamarine in her eyes as they passed a lantern.

"Well, you were speaking in the past tense," he explained uncomfortably, thinking confused thoughts.

"Oh. Everyone died just before I was born," Temari replied.

"Right. Sixteen years ago," Shikamaru replied, remembering the battles he was supposed to have studied. Most of the time it was too much bother. But Asuma had been in that one, and the tactics of the night were fascinating to hear from a live source. "The trap set in the residential houses."

"You know," Temari said suddenly, her voice cold. "I didn't have a single friend my age. And it wasn't because of Gaara. Not at first, anyway."

Shikamaru did not like her tone. He almost felt that she was blaming him for something that had happened before either of them had been born. But what could he say? That it was not his fault? They were both realistic enough to know that if Konoha got into a war tomorrow he would do everything that his teacher had done.

"That's war, sometimes," he shrugged. "You were our enemies."

"Sometimes," Temari replied, "I don't know why we aren't still."

They continued to walk along. They had left the lanterns far behind. Temari seemed aimless in her direction. She could not see the sky properly, and what was the point if you could not see it on the night of the Star Watching Festival? She wheeled ever higher into the rapidly descending sun, and came to herself when she felt Shikamaru's hand on her arm.

"There's a bit of a drop there," he commented dryly, before getting out a cigarette.

Temari looked down at the nose of Konoha's Second Hokage. They must have climbed the stairs without her noticing. She cleared her throat. "It's really stupid for you to smoke those. The health risks alone are greater than a shinobi of your caliber should chance."

"My caliber?" Shikamaru asked, flicking ash off the end of the cherry glow.

"A man who could go into a war zone and come back out intact," Temari replied.

"Huh. Asuma says that kind of thing doesn't happen," Shikamaru told her, inhaling once again.

"I know," Temari looked up at the stars. "There's a great healer up there, they say," she motioned at the sky. "All of our disciplines in are up there. Healer, story teller, builder, crafter, merchant—all of them are in the sky except for the obvious one."

"Shinobi," Shikamaru agreed, "it's a Suna myth, right? We have the great figures of the wars--,"

"Killer," Temari interrupted. "My father once told me. That's the missing constellation. Suna's prized killers."

"You come from a very grim village," Shikamaru commented.

"I know," she sighed, and undid the ties in her straw blond hair. "But we still love one another. We always will."

She watches as lights and music filter up through the leaves blocking the village from the sky. The night is tinged with a bittersweet magic, that leaves long enough for her to kiss Shikamaru on the cheek, and make him laugh at a bad joke. This is what her father wanted for Suna, Temari thinks. Or if it is not, she does not care, as this is what she will make for Suna.


End file.
